By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: April 10, 2013
The Sweeney is a film that was released in the UK last year and has finally come to DVD here in North America. It is based on the popular British television series from the mid 1970s. It is about “The Flying Squad,” a division in the police force that specializes in investigating armed robberies and catching the culprits in the act.
The term “Sweeney” was a nickname for the squad that came from the Cockney rhyming slang Sweeney Todd meaning Flying Squad. The show was known for its gritty realism in how the unit carried out arrests which were often violent if not borderline illegal. The show gave interesting arguments to the ideologies of police brutality and whether or not it was effective and possibly even necessary.
The film’s main character Jack Regan (Ray Winstone) is a hard-edged and incredibly stubborn detective in charge of the Sweeney. He implores his brutal tactics within his team by having them use baseball bats to disarm a bunch of robbers in the opening scene. His brash tactics have high success rates but they also get the unit into hot water with the courts. So enters in Internal Affairs officer Ivan Lewis (Steven Mackintosh), the guy who wants to crack down on Regan’s brutality and get him kicked off the force.
You’ve seen this arc many a time before in cop films. Stuck-up bureaucrat against stuck-up hard-as-nails cop. You already know who comes out on top.
The essence of the television Sweeney was that sometimes, people need to get their hands dirty if they want things done right. But what happens when the people on the receiving end are wrongfully accused? The film adaptation does offer this question briefly and it brings the movie to a slow but intriguing halt. It dips into areas similar to films like Zero Dark Thirty or Rendition. Where do the boundaries lie in the world of torture or brutal investigation?
Innocents—however misleading they may be—are still innocent and the repercussions can be devastating when the law is proven wrong. But before the impact settles in, it turns out that those innocent people are actually bad and everything is okay again.
With my own father originally from Britain, I have seen my fair share of British television dramas and I’m not just talking about Downton Abbey. In every show I saw, one pattern that became apparent to me was that the main character was always a stubborn git. Their methods were crude, selfish and egotistical. Even when they seem completely in the wrong, they continue the macho facade. But all of a sudden in the final 10 minutes, everything falls into place and it turns out they were right all along and everything they did that should have gotten them suspended or fired is completely forgotten. This extremely odd story arc runs like clockwork in The Sweeney.
This film isn’t trying to hammer home any deep meaningful message about police brutality. It tricks you into thinking it might, but it just turns out to be another cop flick. It still can be an entertaining watch once you take away any impact it might have had. It however doesn’t do the original show any justice. In a province where the police seem to be scrutinized for every little thing they do, it is interesting to imagine if a unit such as the Sweeney existed in British Columbia. The news and police haters would have a field day.
