24 Hours in London (2000)

"24 Hours in London" is one of those films you have to watch to know you have seen it once. Then you never bother with it again. Gary Olsen plays "Christian" (a misnomer if ever there was one), who is a sadistic crime boss centered in London at the start of the current millennium (he and his second-in-command reminisce at one point about their torturing a rival in 1996 at one point). Christian is in the midst of eliminating his rivals in London, and capping it off with a partnership with Lloyd (again a misnomer - a woman with a man's name played by Lorelie King) who heads an American syndicate. If his plans succeed he will be stronger than ever. The story somehow is similar to that of the rise and fall of the Kray Brothers back in the 1950s to 1960s, usually at the expense of their rivals the Richardson Brothers. But for all the brutality of the Krays (and they were quite brutal), the Krays never really go to the crazy lengths of Christian. Totally amoral (something not quite true about the Krays - they were critical in their later years at the treatment of elderly people by punks), Christian is willing to spread terror to unconnected third parties as tactics in getting what he wants. We see from the start the maniacal determination to remove obstacles when a young woman (Martha - Anjela Lauren Smith) stumbles upon the extermination of a rival of Christian (no better description) followed by his leading murder squad (including Sarah Stockbridge and David Sonnenthal). All witnesses are executed, but by an error Martha survives. She is taken to police headquarters and reveals what she knows. The police are happy because they've wanted to get the goods on Christian for years. But they are dealing with a dangerous opponent.Christian has one officer in the headquarters under control, and is aware of every move made by Scotland Yard. He also is brazen enough to shoot his way into the Yard to get at Martha. Later he is also willing to give the London police a series of bombings (with high casualty rates) to occupy their time. This is not going to be an easy road to a conviction. The problem is that the unstable nature of his own people work against Christian. Stockbridge and her fellow killer/lover are psychos who get the right mood by their mayhem. They do shoot their ways into the Yard, but Stockbridge's lover gets fatally injured by one of the police (he gets a spike in his eye). It unsettles her when she is alone to carry out her mission, so she goes out of an elevator guns blazing. She faces a lone armed guard (Polly Moore) who has been told to stay there or be shot. As a result of the double pressures on both women they succeed in fatally shooting each other (though a determined Stockbridge does get to the room where the witness is, only to die there).The film is saved from being a total waste because the acting is okay (no more than that though). Stockbridge is a sexy enough killer, and Olson is threatening - but more should have been showed of his interest in the far east (he has personal judo lessons and Asiatic tattoos, and he likes using a sharp Japanese sword as a weapon). There is also some amusing moments (oddly enough), when Olson uses an annoying rival gang to try to kill the witness. That gang actually makes so many errors that they kill a man who is sleeping in bed (an undercover cop as it turns out), and one of their own members before getting shot by the police. But the film is best appreciated by people who just enjoy mindless violence. The plot actually gets so convoluted with hidden agendas and secrets of the characters, that the viewer finds it impossible to follow the mess. I wish that I could say something more positive, but that is about all I could say.

I was at my local blockbuster and was turned on to this movie. Also I heard that it was Tarantinoesque. Me being a big Tarantino fan, was excited to see it. Let's put it this way, I put it in and wasted two hours of my life. The writing in this film is for lack of a better word, appalling. I wrote better stuff when I was a freshman in high school. The script was full of cliché and all around bad dialog. Another beef I had with it was the action. It was like they watched an 8 year old play with action figures and based the action in the movie on this. The plot is stupid as well, there is a twist at the end (which I will not disclose) that made me feel embarrassed for the writer. I also couldn't get a feel for what time they were in, it seemed simi future based on the police garb, but then the cars and everything else seemed modern...Weird. In retrospect, had they thought everything out a little more and took the thousands of clichés out of the script, this movie has potential for good, but just turned out a stinky crap fest. See it if you must, but don't say I didn't warn you.

This movie was terrible. I thought it would be good, but it was not. I do not know what other British-made movies were like, but this sucked. A young woman has witnessed a major gang-deal gone bad, and now Christian (the mob leader) and his gang are trying to have her killed within 24 hours. Two mobsters break into the futuristic police station, and without being hit by a single bullet until the end, they gun down over a dozen heavily-armed SWAT team members. This is even more unbelievable than a video game with cheat codes. There are dumb cops guarding the young woman for the rest of the film, and every time mobsters try to kill her, something goes wrong and the mobsters end up dead. This takes place in the future, so maybe the film's producers will use its futuristic-location as an excuse to why the film was not only extremely fake to the point where it was no longer entertaining, but horrible. Feel free to email me with any questions or comments.

Really, it looked like a nice movie with lots of nice killings and nice bloody gore; all that i and my girlfriend love to watch in a Sunday afternoon. But no; this is one of the worst movies i've ever seen, it has bad acting, bad action sequences, bad scripting, awful sense of humor, it's all bad. I have to say that i'm a B Movie fan, i love low budget movies and i can say with every words --- THIS IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY, TIME, ACTORS AND EQUIPMENT---. With 1/3 of the money that Alexander Finbow had to do this i would be able to do the Portuguese equivalent to "The Lord Of The Rings". I don't know how could anyone be interested in making movies like this one. PANTS!