Pimp

What with his writing, TV presenting and movie acting, one might argue that Danny Dyer has – like Peter Ustinov before him – become the counter-cultural media polymath of the age. He restlessly churns out content, but when it comes to film his name is fast becoming a byword for the unutterably dreadful. And so to ‘Pimp’, a cack-handed and joyless trawl through the grotty dives of Soho following a chaotic week in the life of scallywag sex trafficker Woody (played by writer/director, Robert Cavanah). Offering a tired rehash of his stock wideboy persona, Dyer plays crimelord Stanley who employs Woody as muscle for his ongoing turfwar against local rivals ‘the Chinks’. With its excessive levels of casual racism, sexism and homophobia, the film feels like nothing more than a rejected ‘Derek and Clive’ sketch that’s been stripped of eloquence and irony and calibrated instead for cheap, leery laughs. The attempts, too, at a faux-documentary style are badly botched, partly because the cast is visibly trying too hard to act naturally but mainly because of a script that’s little more than a contrived patchwork of clichés, spurious historical quotations and so much swearing.