Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Craig Fairbrass Robert Glenister, George Russo, Mark Monero, Izuka Hoyle, Taz Skylar, Tomi May, Nicholas Aron, Lauryn Aiufo, Eloise Lovell Anderson, Jade Asha, Selom Awadzi, Cassie Bancroft, Jamie Crew, Sergio Dondi.

There is a certain nostalgia over what is considered the criminal class to which Britain seems to have wrapped up in hues of golden perspective, a thought of how you knew where you stood with the likes of The Krays and all who worked alongside them, that they looked after their own and really only ever took on others out to cause their neighbours harm. It is almost as if we imagine them to be walking down the street looking like John Steed from The Avengers, whilst being able to throw a punch like Lennox Lewis and portraying a face that a grandmother could love.

This is especially true of what was the silver age of the gangster, one who liked to believe they had ethics, perhaps even believing themselves to be in the same mould as Robin Hood, as Dick Turpin, brought into their chosen way of life by circumstance, by conditioning. It is by such thought that you can identify the Villain of a by-gone age and the newer type, ones that seem to have no scruples, less compulsion about picking up a gun and killing a person in a hail of bullets, than those who used their fists for the majority of the time, being up close and personal rather than the embrace of distance to which one bullet fired from the back of a motorbike makes them invincible, makes them a Villain.

Villain may not be Legend, certainly isn’t The Long Good Friday, Brighton Rock, Adulthood or even Scum, but it shines an important light on how criminal celebrity has evolved in the modern age.

Just as in the cliche driven stories of the Wild West and tales of old gunslingers shot down by the quicker, more youthful cowboy, so it is to Villain that the tale of Eddie Franks is dominated by the notion of the old guard finding out that the world around them has changed, that the conception of loyalty and trust has been replaced by the lure of greater fortune, of individualism and by the scourge of drug abuse that still persist in society.

Released from prison and wanting to go straight, Eddie is cornered into re-embracing his old habits to protect his brother, his pub, and his reputation, and as enemies close in on him, the more he finds he is no longer the man he was. It is this that Villain keeps the attention span of the viewer, the unremitting violence, the pay-off that builds to its sudden climax, and whilst the story itself might not be watertight, or indeed perhaps original, it does hold a keen fascination and insight into the underbelly of British crime.

A thought-provoking film which follows in the footsteps of some of the great British crime features of their day, Craig Fairbrass is in exceptional form, and provides the backdrop to the thought of how times have changed, even in the world of criminal activity.

Ian D. Hall