this is the best british gangster film since the long good friday .
jon bennet ( played by andrew howard ) is an extremely good assassin .
as such he is probably an evil man but it does not worry him .
he has become an unquestioning weapon .
he is in the employ of a kingpin ( david calder ) far more evil than he is .
but even assassins have innocent pasts .
he runs into an old from school days and he is married to a mutual girl friend from school .
complicating matters is that they live near where he had a recent job and their young daughter may have seen him at the crime .
a big piece of what makes this film work is the depiction of the kingpin .
calder is a familiar actor in britain , though not frequently seen in the us .
he was seen in the world is not enough . here
he creates one of the best screen villains in recent years .
he is at once seductive and repellent like a beautiful venomous snake .
his lair is underground , apparently in a sewer , where he lives like the king of sewer rats .
it is the kingpin who pulls the strings that will control bennet 's life .
paul
sarossy who directs spent most of his career as a cinematographer and like the kingpin 's lair , he has molded images of class and style out of the darkness . by using semi - darkness and letting the colors of deep blue and black dominate every scene he makes the film visually as ominous as anything in this nether world .
this is a world that is cold and unfriendly .
sorossy creates a world of violence much more by what we hear than what we see .
this is a film with a great deal of physical violence occurring just out of reach .
we see very little but we hear a great deal more and we imagine more than that .
the screenplay is by peter waddington based on the novel by neil cross , but it is sarossy 's film all the way .
it creates indelible images of evil .
i rate it an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +3 on the -4 to +4 scale .
( i do hope they do not use the tagline
" do n't mess with mr .
in - between . " )
makes the film visually as ominous as anything the best british gangster film he creates one of the best screen villains in recent years a big piece of what makes this film work