Review No.120: Hard Boiled Sweets

When I was reviewing Payback Season the other day I mentioned that some of the fight sequences reminded me of those from some of Guy Richie's earlier films however they look totally original when compared to Hard Boiled Sweets which seems to have ripped off the entire oeuvre of the former Mr Madonna. For me I feel that the British gangster movie has long since passed its prime and this Southend-based film just proves it as one generic criminal after another is finished off. The plot is essentially a showdown between two old school gangsters who are both played by actors who instantly trigger the, 'what do I know them from?' question in most of our brains. There's local criminal Shrewd Eddie, played by Paul Freeman who has been in everything from Raiders of the Lost Ark to the Power Rangers Movie while Jimmy the Gent is a London-based gangster and is played by Peter Wight who has this year alone appeared on the TV in Titanic, Hit and Miss and Public Enemies. The meeting between the two will see an exchange of £250,000 so there is some obvious interest in this sum of money with other interested parties being Eddie's vengeful hooker girlfriend Porsche, newly released convict Johnny, his crooked cop buddy Fred, pimp Gerry who everyone refers to as 'Daddy' and his favourite prostitute Delta. Hard Boiled Sweets' unique selling point seems to be the fact that everytime we meet a new character they are compared to a piece of confectionary so for example Jimmy the Gent is The Mint Imperial as he is the King of the Mints while Gerry is The Chocolate Lime because he's an acquired taste and Delta is a Sherbet Pip in that she's a tiny treat with a dizzy centre. I get the impression that writer/director David L Hughes believes he's being awfully clever using these metaphors however there is nothing clever or particularly original about Hard Boiled Sweets.

Using my Guy Ritchie analogy it seems that Hughes wants to emulate the original mockney godfather by giving his characters colourful descriptions and having a lot of multiple plot strands that all interconnect to build up to one big shoot-out at the end. In the case of something like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels though there were clear motives set from the beginning as well as a sense of fun throughout the heart of the film. I didn't find that here as Hard Boiled Sweets took itself far too seriously and Hughes seemed to want to give every character their five minutes in the sun by having them perform a mini-monologue each in which their views were shared through dialogue that wasn't believable for a minute while in some cases was utterly laughable. In fact the script is unintentionally funny from the word go as one of Jimmy the Gent's adversaries claims that he's a bigger cock than him but to be honest everybody in this film seems like a cock. Things got to a head towards the film's final chapter in which there was a three-way shoot-out which just reminded me too much of Reservoir Dogs and screamed a lack of originality on the part of the director once again. On the upside at least the female characters seemed to have a mind of their own, even if Hughes can't write believable dialogue for women, with actresses Ty Glaser and Laura Greenwood shining as Porsche and Delta respectively. However overall this is a film that thinks its a lot more clever than it actually is and while I'm all for promoting young talent it seems that Hughes wasn't ready for a major cinematic project instead meshing together of some of his favourite films. The only thing the film really wanted to make me do was to pop down to my local Mr Simms and dose up on Rhubarb and Custards.

Verdict: Unoriginal with one-dimensional characters and a sense that it thinks it's very clever Hard Boiled Sweets' only redeeming qualities are its two female protagoinists so I'm sorry if this makes me sound like a Sour Ball but I'm only going to give this 2/10