THE CREW
(UK, 2008, d. Adrian Vitoria)

For more than ten years, many film-makers in the British film industry have had a fixation on making gangster films. So many small budget films, so many from first time directors. They tend to show a brutal side of British life, an amoral world of criminals. Some of them have qualities but the films tend to be lost in the welter of similar productions.

The Crew is another of these films. However, it is better made than the average. The director has worked on television series and knows how to tell a story and create atmosphere. This atmosphere is Liverpool and the old style crews who were into burglary and hold-ups, who even had their own hierarchies and codes of respect, some honour among thieves. In the 21st century, things are not the same at all. The younger members of the crews want to make it big for themselves and have few qualms about loyalty and betrayal and murder of rivals does not seem to bother them at all. Their trouble is they think they are smarter than others and this is their undoing unless they are completely ruthless. Another complication is the gangs moving in from the continent, especially from Eastern Europe, who have had longer histories of factions, war and brutality and have no qualms about muscling in in new territories. It's no wonder that the criminals from the old school are either bent on consolidating, no matter what, or are sick of it and want out.

That is what The Crew is about. It opens with a failed robbery. It ends with an elaborate repeat of the robbery with success for some and death for others.
The film captures an atmosphere of a part of Liverpool. The criminals are now better off, live in better houses and apartments – and can celebrate the First Communion party of the son of one of their members. It looks as if the Serbs have the sleazier locations and premises.

This is also the story of two brothers, Ged and John Paul Brennan (Scot Williams and Kenny Doughty). Ged is the boss of the crew, but who feels that his luck is running out and now feels some responsibility towards his little boy. His wife has a cocaine habit and is easily misled by smooth-talking neighbours, as is Ged, who are white collar fraud criminals. John Paul (nicknamed Ratter) is envious of his older brother and, along with an obnoxious sidekick (Paul Olivier) sets calamity in motion with his wanting to get into drug dealing and to oust his brother.
All of the characters have their unpleasant side and it is hard to identify with any of them, which means that the audience is observing rather than empathising. The screenplay does not underplay the vicious violence, the sexual indulgence of the characters nor their callow and crass language.

One of the better films of the genre but many will find its characters and situations repellent.