The Business

Nick Love's follow-up to The Football Factory is a gangland thriller that struts back in time to the Thatcherite Eighties - an era of opportunity and enterprise. Some of it illegal.

South London likely lad Frankie (Dyer) gets into a spot of bother when he takes a cricket bat to his mother's abusive boyfriend.

Keen to avoid the Old Bill, Frankie lands himself a fake passport and heads for the Costa Del Sol where he is instructed to drop off a bag containing cash to a bar owner called Charlie (Hassan), aka The Playboy.

Charlie takes the young naive newcomer under his wing but his long-time partner Sammy (Bell) takes an immediate dislike to the new boy - and he doesn't mind showing it.

Frankie is quite rightly afraid of Sammy.

As he remarks in voiceover: "The geezer was so 'ard, even 'is f***ing nightmares were scared of 'im!"

Soon Frankie is best buddies with his mentor and takes a leading role in smuggling marijuana from Morocco to Gibraltar. But as the lifestyle of sex, drugs and women goes to Frankie's head, the dream turns sour.

Alas, The Business does not live up to its title. While Love's film certainly looks great, evoking the style and fashions of the era, the storyline is second-hand and predictable.

Dyer's transformation from shrinking violet to cocky so-and-so is credible and there are strong turns from Hassan and Bell. But we've seen this all before.

The screenplay's swpm (swear words per minute) frequently charges into double figures.

But the soundtrack is a feast of pop classics, opening with Duran Duran's Planet Earth and including Heart Of Glass, Echo Beach, Video Killed The Radio Star and Welcome To The Pleasuredome.

In terms of Love's film, Simple Minds' lament Don't You Forget About Me falls on deaf ears.