Hard Boiled Sweets (2012)

Another excellent lower-budget British gangster film. God, I just love this stuff. Like most of my favorite films, two brief phrases work really well here: "hidden gem" and "excellent ensemble cast". This one is interesting because the running narration voice-over continually changes from character to character, so you never know what is going to happen next and to whom. It's gritty, seemingly realistic, unpredictable, and unfortunately, over much too soon.If you're into British crime flicks, this is an excellent one, and it is such a short movie that there's no excuse not to at least give it a shot.

In this lame-titled movie we are introduced for 30 minutes to the characters who are assigned some type of candy based on their personalities. There's the convict who's just released from jail. He doesn't walk more than a few steps outside when he's picked up by a corrupt cop who blackmails him into doing a job. The cop is pressured by the wife to have a child but they are unable and getting medical treatment for it.The cop and ex-con go to a beach town and scout. The town is owned by some mobster who gets a take from everything that happens there. Every so often he has a briefcase with 250000 with him. There's the area's pimp and his newest employee, a young innocent girl. At home, the mobster has a gorgeous young wife, a former prostitute given to him by the pimp. She wishes nothing more for the old man to die. And she's involved with the mobster's driver. Then there's the boss. He's on his way to the pick up his part of the money from the mobster. He's being chauffeured around by a black kid, whom he teases and mocks and makes believe that his boss is sleeping with his girl.The cop wants the ex-con to get close to the mobster to steal the briefcase with the money. Around the same time, the mobster's wife wants his driver to help her steal the briefcase when the boss comes, once the total sum of money is there, way more than 250k. The pimp also want the young girl to get close to the boss and steal the case.When most of these people go back to the mobster's house after partying, the story unravels and we'll find out who gets to keep the money and who doesn't make it.Hard Boiled Sweets is an enjoyable movie. The whole candy business is a waste of time though and adds nothing to the story. All the characters are unsavory and nasty and some of the dialogue is unnecessarily crude and for all the nastiness there isn't even any nudity. The way the resolution develops is quite surprising though. And while the ending isn't in the least satisfactory but somewhat predictable it still didn't ruin the movie for me. It is a different and interesting movie to watch.

The movie is based on a short story and that is (my guess) why and how the filmmaker got the money to do the movie. The short movie is on the DVD (I'd think every nation must have it, but check before you buy/rent it of course) and you can watch it afterwards to see the differences. It's not that long and if you liked at least the idea you can judge for yourself what you think of it.Of course the short movie is expanded a lot and ends on a different note too. The acting is decent enough for a movie like this and it might surprise you from times to times. Still there are quite a few things that are wrong. You might care about them or not (it tries too hard to be cool, story flaws and filmmaking flaws), but let's see where this filmmaker is going.

A boring, derivative, badly directed and amateurishly written film. The only other review on IMDb is written by a crew member's relative, and the quote on the poster was paid for - see the readers talk back section on Ain't-it-cool (www.aintitcool.com/node/53709). The real reviews have called it "the worst film of the year", which is much closer to the truth. The characters are clichéd, the plot badly-structured, it has no humour, no suspense, it's glib and cynical. The only thing to take away from this waste of time is that it's an exercise in dishonest film marketing - I guess that's to be expected, as the "director" is a trailer editor. He should stick to doing just that and let the grown-ups make films.