Essex Boys

REVIEW
Edgy Jason is just out after a five-year stint in prison. After corralling Billy to be his driver, he immediately performs various acts of extreme brutality, seeking vengeance on those who’ve betrayed him, seeing betrayal where none exists. Billy is the relative innocent, an amateur who is both intrigued and unsettled at finding himself caught up in the escalating mayhem. The film has just enough visual flair to entertain the die-hard action-thriller aficionado, but it’s also predictable, serving up the expected smorgasbord of plot elements: complications, double-crosses, big scores gone bad. Although it looks slick enough to justify its self-references to such films as Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, it has no innovation and little wit. Essex Boys is ultimately pointless, just another film citing Great Britain’s Range Rover murders as its “inspiration,” but one that will never serve in that capacity itself.