Hackney's Finest

‘The streets of London are paved with blood,’ declares the poster for this knockabout indie. It’s a troubling assertion (how on earth do you pave something with liquid?), but not the most questionable decision behind this tale of bent coppers, Welsh Yardies and a pie-faced Danny Dyer-alike in a hat, all embroiled in a Rizla-thin plot centring around a pile of class-A McGuffins.

If this is an East End gangster flick, why does most of the action take place in an anonymous flat and a knackered warehouse in Tilbury? Why is hero Sirus – aforementioned hat-wearer with a heroin habit – so thoroughly unlikable? Why does the whole thing feel like a straight-to-DVD sequel of a decades-old Guy Ritchie film? Re: that last one, it’ll be all the freeze-framed character intros, the cheeky-chappie voiceover, the comic-book crazy-gangster stereotypes and the lightning-fast drug montages set to a backdrop of third-rate indie tunes