The Business

Set on the Costa del Sol during the '80s, The Business is reminiscent of Sexy Beast - a Cockney crime caper with extra sun and sangria. Frankie (Dyer) becomes a driver for Charlie (Hassan) and soaks up all the perks the life has to offer. But when Charlie and his hard-case partner Sammy (Bell) move up from smuggling dope to trafficking cocaine, the local cops crack down on their operation; worse, Danny finds himself drawn into a web of deceit spun by Sammy's girlfriend Carly (Chapman). Coming on like an extended Duran Duran pop promo, The Business hits the ground running, offering a seductive and pacy story that crackles with intensity. The '80s details are good - remember Rubik cubes, Babycham, Frankie Says and Pacman? - while the soundtrack is an exercise in pop nostalgia, featuring Blondie, OMD and The Buggles among others. Dyer and Hassan make for a convincing pair of wideboys, all flash and bling, while Bell lays it on thick as the snarling, snaggle-toothed heavy ("That geezer was so hard, his nightmares were scared of him"). Where The Business starts to falter, ironically, is when the beautiful lifestyle begins to unravel due to coke-fuelled paranoia. Much depends here on Chapman as the devious love interest, but the role as written is a cipher, a parody of the duplicitous femme fatale, and the pouting Chapman doesn't have the chops to make her character believable. Credibility is strained again and again as writer-director Nick Love (The Football Factory) tries to tie up all the strands of the riches-to-rags fable, until he is finally reduced to farcical melodrama. It's a pity, because the first hour is well worth catching.