There are a few occasions when, as an avowed film fan, the alarm bells start ringing, especially when you step into the arena of straight-to-DVD efforts.

One is when the cover proclaims proudly that it is from ‘the team’ that brought you (insert a film you did not think was good to begin with) – hardly a glowing recommendation.

And the other is when a title you have never come across suddenly appears on the rental shelves, complete with an A-list star gurning on the sleeve, as that usually signals some dusty back catalogue flop that has been released as nothing more than a shoddy cash in.

Step forward Fink, an Australian gangster offering that ‘stars’ Sam Worthington.

This slapdash mess was actually put together way back in 2005, but now an enterprising company over here has given it a lick of paint, stuck a menacing image of Sam on the cover and sat back to count the dollars.

What cosmetic stuff like that cannot do though is salvage something that is a real dud in the first place, and boy do we have a dud here.

Poorly acted, chock full of clichés and trying so hard to be ‘cool’ it is quite frankly embarrassing, it is no wonder this has sat on the shelf for so long.

In a nutshell this is a story of double-crossing, triple-crossing and a whole load of mistaken identity as a bevy of unsavoury characters battle to come out on top.

We get undercover cops, geeky computer fraudsters, underworld bosses and a couple of bungling hitmen (one of which is Worthington) in a real mish-mash of wannabe-cool dialogue, shootouts and supposed laughs.

It looks cheap, in some of the scenes the dialogue can hardly be heard, the obviously intended jokes fall flat and the whole thing is far too convenient to really surprise or entertain.

Written and directed by Tim Boyle (who cut ties with the film before its release) this comes across as the work of someone who was reared on Guy Ritchie movies and then simply told ‘go and make something like that’.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it can still mean a turgid 90 minutes in front of your TV screen.

 

Available now – no extras

 

 

About The Author

Simon Fitzjohn

Simon is a journalism tutor in London, who also just happens to be a movie fanatic, with a craving for the darker side of cinema. He has written two books, one on the horror films of director Bob Clark (2014) and the other on the history of the character Norman Bates (2015). His third book, on the work of British exploitation director Pete Walker, is due in 2017.