No single subgenre is as tired as "loose-cannon cop breaks the rules to bring down a band of ruthless criminals." So director Nick Love tries to liven this British policier up with a number of faux-Christopher Nolan flourishes — the oft-ripped-off Inception horns herald the bad guys' arrival, helicopter flybys transition us from scene to scene, and the color palette is as cold as Batman's cowl (also much like a Nolan film: the women are here only to look pretty and to serve as tragedy fodder). But even with its superhero influence and foreign setting, this is the same old shtick: angry veteran Jack Reagan (Ray Winstone) is hot on the trail of some murderous bank robbers. He steps over the line once too often, ends up disowned by the force, and has to finish the investigation in his own pseudo-fascistic way. The Sweeney was originally a 1970s TV show, but with the archetypal characters, the rote plot, and the nondescript gunfights, it feels more like an adaptation of a video game.
