Director: Neil Jordan
Screenplay: Neil Jordan and David Leland
Starring: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, Clarke Peters, Kate Hardie
Running Time: 104 minutes
Genre: Drama, thriller
George (Hoskins) is a small-time London gangster who is released after seven years in prison and is given a job a driver and bodyguard to call girl Simone (Tyson). The two take an instant dislike to each other but their mutual animosity warms into a tentative friendship and George begins to fall in love with her. On Simone's behalf, he embarks on a dangerous odyssey through London's sleaziest clubs and vice dens to rescue a young girl.
Irish director Neil Jordan is probably best known for such films as The Crying Game (1992) and Interview with a Vampire (1994). In this stylish British gangland thriller, which plays a little like a London take on Taxi Driver (1976), Jordan moves from gritty realism to almost surrealism. Bob Hoskins was Oscar nominated for his portrayal of the conflicted and strangely naïve hoodlum, who moves between a kind of gruff compassion to bursts of savage violence, he always seems like a powderkeg that can detonate at any moment. Cathy Tyson is impressive as the enigmatic Simone. Michael Caine appears as Denny Mortwell, George's suave, sleazy boss, a wealthy pornographer, pimp, procurer and blackmailer, and comedian and actor Robbie Coltrane provides one of the film's few glimpses of warmth and humanity as Thomas, George's eccentric but kind-hearted mechanic friend. While this plays essentially as an above average British gangster thriller, it has a style and offbeat humour that really elevates it. It is definitely worth watching, but be warned it goes into some very disturbing territory and gets really dark at times.
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