Writers: Michael Head and Lucinda Royden
Director: Coz Greenop
Is there anything left to say about the British gangster and any cliches and tropes left unexplored? Writers Michael Head and Lucinda Royden certainly thinks so with this new drama The Last Heist available for digital download. Its premise is potentially an interesting one but feels a little dry in this overly conventional 90-minute film about a reunion, grief and the oft-explored question of whether crime actually pays.
Shortly after the death of respected crime boss Mick, his son and a group of regular collaborators gather in a local bar to celebrate the man they all adored (or feared). Across the evening, the men share stories and memories of the good times they spent with Mick while reflecting on the last job they did together six months before after which they all went into hiding.
Head and Royden’s film directed by Coz Greenop is structurally novel if not narratively inventive, using a flashback style to take the audience back in time to a series of different encounters in order to paint a picture of East London life and the variously complicated connections between this group of men in a network based on loyalty and mutual connivance. But it becomes a little cliched as the arrival of each new member of the group then results in a new reflection on their departed leader and big local personality.
This memorial drink then also merges the story of the heist told piecemeal from the perspective of different characters and dealing with the consequences of their involvement. It creates a kid of episodic tension as the event unfolds in chapters, however some of the drama is eaten away by the mixture of scenes in the main bar as the team are reunited and the separate memories of Mick. It is unclear in The Last Heist just what the creative team wants the audience to take away or what the principal focus should be. This is a film that feels like it is treading water until it can get to the clever reveal.
And when that comes, the audience has a moment of recognition, but it doesn’t feel like the effective dramatic culmination of everything we have seen. Head and Royden spend some time at the end of the film then applying that to each of the characters as part of their story arc resolution, yet the outcome is too similar and ultimately too repetitive to warrant the investment earlier in the film.
There are some solid performances here, particularly Perry Benson as one-time gang leader Mick seen only in other people’s recollections and from Terry Stone who has also seemingly spent his career in these kinds of film playing exactly this kind of role. The rest of the cast include an underused Sam Gittins as the youngster in the gang and Michael Head as Mick’s son who put the heist together. There is only one female voice of any significance though and the actor is given very little to do except pour drinks and look knowing.
The Last Heist feels like a film from another era, in more ways than one and while this criminal gang start to feel the time is running out, so too does this formulaic genre. Head and Royden try to give it some life with a slightly different structure, but this is one criminal enterprise that doesn’t pay off.
The Last Heist will be in UK Cinemas from 4th November & Digital Download from 14th November.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAe3YXhJgHo
