The Sweeney

[It] feels a lot like an American-made cop movie circa 1990.

Based on a '70s British program, this is a bombastic effort that, while not successful, is still as bracing as a cold pint.

Maybe it worked in the '70s; it's too worn to work these days. Ray Winstone needs to find better rocks to chew on.

The movie blithely repeats most of the clichés of the American badass-cop flick, only in impenetrable Cockney.

This might just be a British thing that we don't understand - literally.

Mr. Winstone chews on this Cockney cops-and-robbers caper with foulmouthed glee.

Love stages the action with a panache that belies the film's relatively modest budget and the big-set piece scenes... have an exhilarating energy and punch that British crime movies rarely deliver.

Its slight and simplistic narrative can't escape feeling like an overlong episode from your pick of a plethora of past and current like-minded television series.

The Sweeney as a film has a not-so-secret weapon in leading man Ray Winstone, who plays Jack Regan, head of the "Flying Squad."

Likely to be met with a mixture of laughter and audible groans amongst cinemagoers.