The Big I Am

Accurate and realistic UK urban story, great camera with a mixed UK-USA cast !! Leo Gregory, an actor who has always been second lining, finally got a chance to prove him self and play important role in his acting career.

Nic Auerbach a newly arrived UK director showed us something we have forgotten after Guy Ritchie real movies "Lock, Stock.." and "Snatch", Nick Love's "The Business", De Rakoff's "The Calcium Kid" - "Dead Man Running"... and related UK criminal genre movies.

It appears that Hollywood producers spend BIG money to make films for their audience only - making sure to make a 1001 cliché !!! Give Nic Auerbach a job to make a movie - he will do it right.

And of course I almost forgot excellent Vincent Regan !!!

-review by Scooper

This movie is about a low rent hustler, who while fleeing the police after a botched job hooks up with a mid-level gangster and finds out what its like to be an enforcer instead of the enforcee. The problem is with all his connections success and powers the gangsters not doing much better, than the hustler. Then you add in the moral dilemma of the gangsters specific trade and the love story, in short it plays more like "Carlitos way" than "Gangster No. #1". The opening scene the hustlers on the phone with an over the top angry gang-banger. They forecast that they're going to jump him just like they forecast when they throw him over the side of the building he'll and on a railing and not fall to his death. C'mon for god sakes the movie just started. We then see a group of suited gangsters with another over the top angry one who's pointing his gun at his fellow goons head. They raid a drug deal. So that's like 5 sets of gangsters and none of them interesting. That's the problem too many characters and not enough characters. No one a different or unique personality or stands out. They're either angry or subdued. The gang-bangers are not the interesting ones in "bullet boy", or "B.U.S.T.E.D." Same with the scenes plenty of scenes all boring and they don't push the story along. There are no scenes like in "8 dead men" where the tormentors brag to their victim about finding and torturing his hidden gay lover. And don't expect it the scenes to tie together like in "Layer Cake", the film just peters out, with a fizzle.

A truly awful film this. I was lured in by the excellent Vincent Regan (who as usual is great), and Michael Madsen, who is on autopilot and presumably was brought in to make the film more marketable to the US market.

There are some good performances from Phil Davis and Leo Gregory even if they are very typecast actors, but these are offset by dire showings by Paul Kaye and a ludicrous cameo from Stephen Berkoff at the most ridiculous auction of trafficked sex slaves ever. The assorted gangsters are stereotyped and badly acted.

It is probably worth noting that the movie is essentially a vanity project for Robert Fucilla, who is absolutely dire throughout, and probably wouldn't have got made without his personal funding.

I never normally write reviews, but was so disappointed by the film that I felt compelled to do so. It may be worth noting that the movie also has a very strange washed out look to the colours which I also felt detracted from what should be a dark gritty tale.

Badly directed and filmed throughout - do not waste your time.

Highly talented actors give this production their tough guy act best performances, and together make for a high energy romp. It doesn't quite have the hidden menace or black humour of Tarantino, or the surprise-in-your-face ultra violence of Guy Richie, but is certainly landing squarely within the genre. There's a good soundtrack, effectively used to back the action, of mostly rugged hip-hop or working class ballads, that also set it apart from my earlier comparisons. This is a good London criminal thriller, full of executions, intrigue and potty-mouth threats. Definitely not suitable for children.

It was OK. I mean, I get it, the plot, and the characters, but what I didn't understand was the chemistry that the film tried to create between Skinner and Vincent Regan's girl. Although she was apart of the human trafficking. I still didn't see the relevance in making her character fall for this guy. And what was deal with Madsen? Good actor and all, but it seems like the story was trying to take you some place, but it never quite actually got there. Skinner's character should have been more aggressive, especially when it to the got the part his sister. There could have been more to that. Over all the movie was watchable to the end.