Sweeney! (1977)

You won't be disappointed!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

I remember seeing, and liking, this when it first came out in 1977. I loved the introduction to Regan and Carter, hung over after a night of debauchery with an air hostess. 'The code word is air screw.' The initial murder scene of Lynda Bellingham's character sticks in the mind too. I found it believable and it sets the film off at a great pace.I loved the 70s British clothes. Look out for the ubiquitous green parka with the furry hood! We all had them. And the 70s British cars. They were brilliant once you got them started and before they rusted through. God, those stunt drivers could handle them.I loved the grittiness of it all and the convincing performances by Thaw, Waterman, Welland, Keen and Foster. I loved the details like the Private Eye hung up by Cater's toilet.Great plot and great snapshot of 70s British culture. 'All right, Tinkerbell, you're nicked'.

Without doubt THE SWEENEY is one of the most popular and fondly remembered television shows Britain has ever produced and this was the first of two films made to tie in with the television series . It's certainly the more compelling of the two but where as the sequel did mirror the Thames Television series the original doesn't entirely One of the reasons for the show's success was its offbeat humour which features here in an early scene " What you mean Tiny Large ? " " He's a total animal . I remember we had him down the station and he wouldn't leave his cell so we sent in an alsatian . He broke its jaw and threw it out " " Dog Day Afternoon " What is noticeable right from the opening scene is that politics is involved and this film version of THE SWEENEY is very much a political thriller which sets in motion a shadowy conspiracy involving Special Branch trying to bump off DI Jack Regan who knows too much for his own good . It's a bit more grittier than the TV show if only that it shows a graphi scene of a constable getting shot in the head but the whole conspiracy is unlikely and feels false . And the final scene is somewhat confusing Having said that it's always good to see the underatted John Thaw playing the all drinking all smoking DI Regan during an era when TV cops were nasty but nice crimebusters . Certainly a film that reflects the strengths of the television show and one wonders if Nick Love's big screen version later this year will be a very pale imitation ?

Detectives Regan & Carter investigate the suspected murder of a prostitute and find that there is major corruption, blackmail and murder bubbling under the surface.Sweeney! is a TV spin-off that further pushes the grit and grime that had been established in the hugely popular series. Boasting call girls, blood, automatic weapon carnage, more blood and lots of shouting, it does in short have most things fans of the series could want. It also serves as a interesting snap-shot of mid to late 70s London as various sequences operate in and around the old smoke. Yet in spite of its guts and gusto and nicely woven plot {incorporating the oil slant}, it ultimately sags too often and criminally under uses Dennis Waterman's Carter. This is really about John Thaw's Reagan. Fine for fans of the always excellent Thaw, but this was a dynamite duo, and somewhere along the way somebody made a poor decision to focus on one part of the team.The cast is filled out with notable British actors as the story unfolds. Barry Foster {Frenzy}, Ian Bannen {Too Late the Hero}, Colin Welland {Straw Dogs}, Brian Glover {Kes} and Diane Keen; who was a star of many a British TV production. It's pretty much one for fans only, because you get the feeling that newcomers, although sure to be impressed with its toughness, will wonder just what all the fuss was about back in the sweary Sweeney 70s. 6/10

"Sweeney!" was one of the innumerable TV spin-offs which kept the British film business perilously afloat in the 1970s. For once this low-budget work did not spring from a sitcom but from Britain's best ever cop show, which made "Starsky and Hutch" look like "Sesame Street" with its relentless violence and raucous backchat. ("Sweeney Todd", it should be explained , is London rhyming slang for the Flying Squad, an elite detective unit of the Metropolitan Police.) Jack Regan and his sidekick George Carter here find themselves out of their depth with a bigger budget and canvas than on the boob tube: they get "webbed up"in an international conspiracy to lower, or raise, or something, oil prices. A suave Energy Minister is too fond of the high-class "brasses" furnished by his American PR agent. He is blackmailed, with multiple-murderous consequences and mucho ketchup.In some ways this is very much a 1970s period piece: flared trousers, two-tone grey telephones and no computers, police who drink and smoke heroically, ugly lowlifes, hideous pubs, tyre abuse, shootouts in junkyards and an overall grey, downbeat atmosphere which is a far cry from the Swinging London of Hollywood England in the previous decade. "Sweeney" was conceived at the moment of maximum crisis when OPEC was holding the industrialised nations to ransom, inflation was the highest for 60 years and trade unionists and militant socialists seemed poised to seize power in Blighty. True, a red double-decker bus figures during one chase, but the film makes concessions to mid-Atlanticism neither in casting, nor by moderating the constant Cockney badinage ("leave it aht!", "you wot?", "shut it!", "dull it isn't" (mocking a Met recruitment slogan)) nor by glamourising its high-life scenes. Also carried over from the series is the endless friction between different law enforcers: Regan clashes not only with his superior but with the security services and Special Branch, the Met's anti-subversion arm. Typically, he cocks up the operation to snatch the PRO and bring him to justice. Regan is no superhero.Contrary to what others have posted, I find Foster's accent and manner all too convincing, and his performance incisive. The theme of politicians being corrupted by their spin doctors remains fresh. Ian Bannen as the blackmailed MP looks and has a role not unlike Robert Vaughn's. Thaw and Waterman are the same crumpled reprobates as on the small screen, but the plot makes too little of their partnership; Regan is suspended and lone-wolfing it for much of the running time.No doubt the best of "The Sweeney" was on TV, but this is a fair-value distillation and introduction. It makes the mockney gangster movies of Mr Madonna and his posse look pathetic. "Up yours, sunshine!"