It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Some of my friends sometimes say, "have you ever seen such a film, it is really bad?" I tell them to go away and watch this film, then come back and tell me just how bad their film was again. So far 100% have come back to tell me that compared to this "film", their film was actually brilliant!

This film is hilarious. Everything about it is dreadful. From the young gangster's wife who, despite being filthy rich and living in Dover, seems to be unable to make it to her dreamland of France (oooo, I wonder what the people are like over there? What, about an hour away from your house?) to the post production dubbing and disturbingly wooden acting. There isn't a plot. There isn't a soundtrack as they seem to only have the rights to one song. The comedy value sort of makes it worth watching but actually it isn't worth watching, I don't want to take the blame for subjecting you to it. It's also mildly racist, but the waterboarding scene is much funnier than anything I've seen for a long while. The one thing that could make it worse would be the presence of Danny Dyer. But not much.

The camera work is pretty good, high quality in fact. The film looks very professionally shot, don't listen to people who say otherwise.Dave himself is on great form - Honestly he's worth the ticket price alone as aging but still formidable, charismatic psycho with a fondness for nine irons and hot, trophy wives.Nigel St Lewis who has no lines yet manages to absolutely terrify as mute, smiling psycho, particularly in the (probably best scene of the movie) set to 80's classic Je Taime... moi non plus. It draws parallels with Layer cakes ordinary world scene but blows that out of the water. You'll never listen to Serge Gainsbourg the same way again.Bad points - Many times the film felt very contrived. Bad writing both in terms of plot structure and dialogue. Some of the actors honestly were just reading the lines. At times it was bad it was jarring, to the point you just can't suspend your disbelief.There's a lot of things wrong with FEB - But you don't buy a fiesta and expect a Ferrari. It never pretends to be Oscar bait and damn it it is (sometimes unintentionally) fun. All I'm saying is that if you locked Dave and Nigel in a room with a decent Director, a good script and a budget then you'd really have a movie!

I wanted something a bit different over the weekend and by Jove I got it!Crime thrillers are not what usually tickles my pickle but this one was an absolute piéce de résistance. It's full of ghoulish killings and vile criminal types doing very unpleasant things to one another, but I must admit it got me rather fired up, out of my usual comfort zone, and throroughly kocked senseless by the shocking final twist (which I won't be giving away I'm afraid).The film follows the lives of Britain's drug barons, and shows how easy it can be for a poor fellow who once served Queen and Country to fall in with this unpleasant lot.I most highly commend this wonderful film, and I hope you all find it as delightful as I did. Only a 9, however, because it was too gory in parts. I'm squeamish.