At the start of new UK crime flick Plastic, it's claimed that the film is based on a true story. It reminds me of a similar opening to Fargo, the hilarious comedy-thriller from the Coen brothers. I sit there in the darkness, wondering if the story I'm about to see is true, or whether – like Fargo – that's just part of a fictional tale that begins once the cameras start rolling.
By the end of the film, I couldn’t care less, and a word that sounds like 'fargo' springs to mind: farrago.
The premise of Plastic was certainly promising, if ultimately misleading: a quartet of young credit card scam merchants/students, who aren't above a spot of GBH if there's money in it, get themselves on the wrong side of a proper gangster, played by Thomas Kretschmann (Stalingrad).
Out of their depth and threatened with death, the four lads – played by Ed Speleers (Downton Abbey, Eragon), Will Poulter (We're The Millers), Alfie Allen (Game of Thrones) and Sebastian de Souza (Skins) – focus their criminal minds on scamming £2 million in a fortnight in order to save their wretched lives.
They target a girl (Emma Rigby, Hollyoaks) they recently met, who happens to works for a credit card company, and can access info at the high-end of the business. Before you can say 'Cor blimey!' the crooked quintet are off to Miami for some major ducking and diving around South Beach and the like.
Once they hit Florida, the flimsy plot descends into silliness, until a predictable finale that involves lots of stupidity, even more guns, and a generous helping of gunshot squibs exploding like it's the annual Wild Bunch Reenactment Day.
It's all pretty tiresome, and what could have been a bearable Guy Ritchie-like geezer romp ends up something on a par with 2001's 51st State – a film so bad, I still get flashbacks more than 12 years after seeing it.
John Byrne
