Essex Boys: Law of Survival

I don't know where to begin... I was a huge fan of the original Essex Boys and Rise of the Foot Soldier movie, and then I watched Essex Boys: Retribution which was totally appalling. I always find it a shame when low budget movies are made only to try and ride on the coat tails of a decent original, so I'm a bit disappointed in myself for getting my hopes up when I saw Essex Boys: Law of Survival.

I found the whole movie very poor, right from the get go we are introduced to the absolutely dire narration. Apparently the fact that the intro was played and narrated by the real character is supposed to be something of a beacon for the movie, but unfortunately it just shows us what we have to put up with for the next hour and a half.

The acting throughout the movie is terrible, and it seems as if the "actors" are all reading the script for the first time on camera. It comes across as more of a cheap football hooligan type movie than a British gangster flick, with incredibly shocking fight scenes which don't give off a whiff of violence or aggression and are far too fluffy to even come close to convincing us that these are supposed to be feared "hard men" that are being depicted.

Won't go into the plot as I'm sure people will still want to watch the movie. At the most it's probably worth having on for the sake of a bit of background noise which you might give an occasional glance, but it certainly isn't worthy of complete concentration for the duration of the movie.

I cannot remember watching a movie with such bad acting. With an idiotic plot, this film is a complete embarrassment to the British film industry. Believe me when I say that it is probably the worst I have ever seen. I saw that it had a 7.1 IMDb rating, and thought it might be good. How wrong I was. Hard men who are not hard. Fights that look like they are taking place in a school playground. Blood as thick as ketchup. To sum it up. This is NOT how to make a movie. I find it difficult to believe that a review on this film has to be 10 lines long. There are not enough words to describe how bad it really is. One actor whom I remember from Londons Burning, had the lead bad guy role. He won't get employment in films again. There was also a bloke with a flat cap who was supposed to be hard. He looked totally out of place with his not hard posing. Then there was the bad dying. I thought actors learned how to die on screen. These guys must have been in the pub on the day that acting school was teaching the pupils how to die. Watching this film will make you despair at the waste of money and time used in churning out this complete drivel .

To start off I am a big fan of all films old,new,bad and good....But this is just beyond belief. It is so bad I do not know where to start!!??. The acting is horrendous , camera work shocking and directing .. abysmal. I think, reading between the "lines" (lol) it was trying to be a Lock Stock Style film....but what a failure. The accents where a joke. Watch out for the amateur acting as if they are waiting for each others line and not sure whos next....poor director?

The fight scenes are farcical...note the police one at the start in the yard. I have always looked at the rating scores here for films but now I seriously have grave doubts. Every review was about 1 or 2.....one critic put it at 5 stars!...yeh right! How the hell did it get its rating of 5.5+. Lot of false reviews here me thinks. AVOID please.

Shocking dialogue and acting, with no redeeming features whatsoever. The fight scenes are dreadful, the sound is dreadful, the plot is dreadful and the cast are dreadful. Gunfire sounds like firecrackers and the dialogue sounds as if the actors were making it up as they went along. Fight scenes are comedic, in that there is no rehearsed moves and sound effects, so all you get is a few grunts here and there and screwed up noses. The budget for this movie must have been around a hundred quid. Wardrobe looks limited to Sue Ryder, especially the bald 'heavy', who clearly drew the short-straw when it came to attire! It really boils down to a gangster war consisting of about ten people - 'very scary'. Nothing about this film is believable, from the ridiculous opening scenes, where we see two gangs of over the hill thugs, doing everything but FIGHT, despite being six feet apart - just enough room for the 5 or so extras, dressed as riot police to fit in (obviously a tight budget). Only then do we see some pathetic shoving about, resembling a fight in a Thursday morning Post Office pension queue. What is puzzling is that the rogue policeman, despite taking over the protection racket (consisting of one garage) and telling the owner he has to pay 'him' now, then inexplicably shoots him in virtually the next scene, thereby rendering the exercise pointless. It's safe to assume that I hated this movie - low-budget it may be but every single facet of this movie is appalling. With better direction, a better script and a few more quid spent, this might have been redeemable. As it is, it's simply amateurish and embarrassingly bad!

So I am full of hope, the Brits made another awesome hooligan movie.

What the hell, what is this? I have questions, millions of question.

1) Is that chubby lead actor very rich? Did he buy himself a role? It can not be he was casted. Surely? 2) Why, in the opening scene, show a woman with big boobs, and then the whole movie nothing, absolutely nothing? Did they know the movie was so bad that the only way people would sit through this was the promise of massive jugs? 3) Fighting scenes. In 1960 they knew how to make the scenes better.

This movie is an insult to all those great cult movies, is an insult to acting, actors and everything it stands for. Non of these actors should ever be allowed to be on the white-screen again. Isn't there some sort of police for this? I had to create an IMDb account, just to express my disbelieve.