Starring
Danny Dyer, Tamer Hassan, Geoff Bell, Georgina Chapman, Roland Manookian, Eddie Webber, Camille Coduri
Directed by
Granted the language is more "fackin 'ave 'im" than "fuggedaboudit", but otherwise it's all here: the callow, impressionable youth seduced by the alluring, ruthless criminal underworld; the street smart mentor who takes him under his wing; the loose cannon partner; and the greed for power and money that finally topples their little empire.
Love also co-opts Scorsese's visceral, kinetic style and it doesn't hurt that his protagonist Frankie (Dyer) leaves glum south London for glam southern Spain early on. Damian Bromley's fine camerawork gets punch-drunk on Malaga's bleached-white villas, lobster-red bodies basted in sunshine and the trappings of the 1980s "loadsamoney" lifestyle.
Almost as soon as he arrives on the Costa Del Crime, Frankie hooks up with flashy drug dealer Charlie (Hassan, who'll never get a better screen entrance than here), along with his psychotic mate Sammy (Bell), their crew, and Sammy's teasing minx of a girlfriend Carly (Chapman).
As with any business, cost-effective expansion is the name of the game and Charlie's mob move smoothly from taking over a local nightclub to eventually running marijuana from Morocco. They even sweet talk the local mayor, although once they renege on a promise not to deal cocaine, the stakes are dramatically raised all round. And that's without Frankie's growing attraction for the duplicitous Carly.
