Last Updated on September 29, 2020 by rob
Detective Insp Regan and Sgt Carter of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad investigate the death of prostitute Janice Wyatt (Lynda Bellingham) at the urging of her boyfriend Ronnie Brent (Joe Melia) and stumble across a conspiracy to blackmail British politician Baker (Ian Bannen) over an OPEC oil deal. When Brent is murdered by a pair of assassins run by Baker’s PR man Elliott McQueen (Barry Foster) the killers then frame Regan for drink-driving. Suspended from his job and shadowed by Special Branch Regan tracks down Bianca (Diane Keen), a high class prostitute who works for McQueen and the only person who can help him and Carter solve the mystery. But McQueen’s killers are hot on their trail.
Briskly paced, no nonsense crime thriller that’s one of the best of the slew of big screen versions of popular UK TV shows British producers used to knock out in the 1970’s. I’ve always liked this because it captures what made the show so appealing – namely the camaraderie and sarcastic banter between Regan and Carter – with the more explicit violence a big screen feature can offer. Its story about a conspiracy to blackmail a British minister into changing his mind about demanding a higher oil price at an OPEC conference has faint echoes of the American political thrillers of the period. Although we’re left to infer that the conspiracy of American oil companies to stop Baker is one shared by the British Establishment (though never explicitly stated Baker is clearly a Labour minister) it certainly is by the security services. One of the biggest shocks in the film is discovering Special Branch actively assisting McQueen’s assassins in trying to kill Regan and Bianca.
As in the TV show (S3’s Visiting Fireman, for instance) cops and spooks – though nominally on the same side – are shown to have completely divergent interests with Regan essentially powerless against the machinations of the security services even though he ultimately proves just as ruthless as them in getting his man. Ranald Graham’s script also offers loads of quotable dialogue for Sweeney buffs – two of my favourites being Ronnie Brent’s exasperated reaction when the coroner declares his girl Janice’s death to be suicide, hissing ‘That’s all bollocks!’ and Regan’s venomous dressing down of an officious Special Branch apparatchik. “Now you listen to me Little Lord Spymaster’, Regan tells the man, ‘You may be Special Branch but that don’t make you God Almighty. I’m a DI and you’re a Sergeant, right? For your information if you want to talk to a senior officer you go through your Guv’nor. Got it? Now sod off”!
Thaw and Waterman are just as good here as they are in the series with the former getting some effective character moments, especially his tangled feelings of attraction and disgust toward Keen’s high class call girl and – in the film’s climax – displaying a murderous ruthlessness toward nailing his enemy that’s entirely consistent with the character as established in the TV show. Waterman gets slightly less to do but he has his share of memorable scenes including shutting down Regan’s self-pitying blather over a heavy pub session with the immortal riposte, ‘You know what, Jack? You’re full of shit!’ as well as letting loose with one of the most outraged and sustained ‘Oi’s!’ ever heard when having to break into his own flat after Regan and Bianca barricade themselves inside. The supporting cast (most everyone in this guest starred on the show at some point) are also good value.
I’d forgotten how beautiful Diane Keen was and in her scenes with Regan she’s appealingly vulnerable. Ian Bannen as the minister seeking refuge from his troubles in alcohol puts a tipsy spin on almost all his lines and I really like the moment where – as clouded by alcohol as he is – suddenly twigs that his PR man isn’t what he seems. ‘Who are you?’ he says. ‘I’m your PR man’ comes the smooth reply. ‘Who are you working for?’ insists Baker. ‘I work for you, Charles’ replies McQueen, the absolute picture of angelic innocence. Barry Foster, who always does a nice line in supercilious creeps is most amusing as McQueen and I got a laugh out of the way he keeps calling up a team of jovial assassins nicknamed Johnson and Johnson (Michael Coles and Antony Scott) using bland business phrases as verbal code for the imminent demise of some unfortunate. And Johnson and Johnson represent a threat the film makes both funny and terrifying. Cheekily using the catchphrase of a well known police recruitment campaign of the period one of the killers remarks, having executed a gruesome scrapyard massacre, ‘They’re right you know, dull it isn’t!’
It’s a disappointment that Dusty Miller’s lighting has such a flat look though. The TV series has a deserved reputation for its cinematic qualities but its lighting was always constrained by IBA restrictions over the perceived limitations of 16mm film. You’d think no such obstructionism would apply to a movie yet curiously the film actually looks far more conservative in its lighting than the show ever did. The few scenes here that aren’t overlit – such as a terse encounter between Regan and Carter in which the latter warns his boss that Special Branch are onto him – only serve to remind the viewer how much better these things look when some shadows are allowed in. Director David Wickes (the flashiest of the series helmers as well as the one whose episodes invariably pushed the violence to new heights) brings a sort of feverish mania to the brutality and I particularly liked the sight of Michael Coles trying to machine gun Regan and Bianca while dressed as a traffic warden.
Something about that image of everyday officialdom armed and coming to kill you is really quite unnerving and the film runs with that, having fun disguising Johnson and Johnson as policemen, taxi drivers, window cleaners, etc. Although Wickes fumbles a key setpiece in which Bianca gets shot (Coles’ assassin appears to literally step into frame from out of nowhere) the film’s climax, in which Regan knowingly prevents McQueen’s deportation from the country knowing full well that such action will put the man under an instant death sentence from Johnson and Johnson is a flawlessly directed, edited and scored sequence that goes right to the heart of what a hard bastard Regan could be. A sequel to Sweeney! made a few years later proved a lazy, self-indulgent mess but this first one is good, satisfying stuff and well worth a look.
