Bonded by blood

OI, DANNY Boy! Where do you think you’re going, you muppet? The only surprising thing about this industry-standard British gangster flick is that it somehow fails to star the ubiquitous Danny Dyer.

An aggressive retelling of the so-called 1995 "Range Rover" murders, Bonded by Bloodfollows a bunch of foul-mouthed hoodlums – they'll see you next Tuesday and every Tuesday after that – as they fall out over attempts to market drugs to Essex clubbers in the mid-1990s.

Based on an account of the killings by Bernard O'Mahoney, a former gang member and one-time subject of the priceless TV series Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men, the picture spends a great deal of time in seedy acrylic living rooms, garishly lit nightspots and blood- splattered prison refectories. No opportunity is wasted to snort a line. No bleedin' slag escapes her slapping. And so forth.

To be fair, the performances by the largely unfamiliar cast are pretty much up to scratch. All apparent graduates of the Ray Winstone Finishing School, the actors growl with impressive degrees of conviction as they power the characters towards different classes of oblivion.

But there's no escaping the grubby relish the film takes in its antiheroes' sociopathic addiction to violence. Suitable only for geezer completists, Bonded by Blooddoes, at least, have some fun with its period trappings. "Del Boy never did become a millionaire," somebody sighs.

Poignantly, many of the characters failed to live to see the heroes of Only Fools and Horsesmake their fortune. The episode aired just a few months after the murders.