A slightly rougher and (in the last 15 minutes or so) more violent & gory spin-off from the TV series but with no DCI Haskins. Instead we suddenly have some bloke who looks like Sir Humphrey off `Yes Minister' playing Regan's & Carter's boss. The plot is a bit disjointed in places. Basically it's about a gang of `armed blaggers' toting gold sawn-offs and alarming '70s hairdos who jet in from Malta every so often to turn over some London bank. But then halfway through, the focus suddenly switches to some French-speaking `geezer' from Beirut in a hotel disarming a bomb in his room. He has absolutely nothing to do with the armed blaggers, but we stay with him for a good 20 minutes as George Carter dresses up as room service, takes him a large Scotch and ends up helping him disarm the bomb while all the other coppers have an impromptu booze-up downstairs in the hotel bar. No explanation as to who he is, where the bomb came from and what he's doing there, except for later on when Regan tells Carter `by the way' that `the geezer with the bomb' was with the CIA. And that's it!!! We're left to fill in the many blanks ourselves as the plot goes back to the expat blaggers living it up on Malta and planning their next `job'. We learn that they steal the exact equivalent of $100,000 in every raid - no more and no less. But again, absolutely no explanation is given as to the rationale behind this. Then there's Denholm Elliot's crooked Detective Superintendent who gets `sent down' for corruption. Early on we're told that he was Regan's ex-boss and that the two had been working closely for years, but I don't recall ever seeing or even hearing of the character in the TV series (although I can't claim to have seen every episode and it's been some years since I saw the programme so maybe I've missed something). Like its parent TV series and similar shows of the era (such as `The Professionals'), Sweeney 2 sticks two fingers firmly up at the PC brigade, and that's still very refreshing to see in this day and age, when programme-makers seem to be obsessed with tokenism, `inclusiveness' and not `offending' anyone. Despite its shortcomings and plot vagaries, this is an enjoyable movie for those with fond memories of a golden age in British television and '70s nostalgics in general. A bit of a mixed bag to be sure, but worth a look.
