Twenty8K   Starring: Parminder Nagra, Jonas Armstrong, Kaya Scodelario and Nichola Burley Cine-Britannia / Showbox Home Entertainment RRP: £17.99 SBX541 Certificate: 15 Available 01 October 2012

When her brother is accused of a gang related murder, Deeva Jani returns to London, from her successful career in the fashion business. What she finds is that her brother is involved in the seedier side of London life where corruption touches both the high living and the low born. In an effort to clear her brother’s name Deeva must navigate the violent world of gangsters and corrupt cops...

Twenty8K (2012 - 1 hr, 41 min, 51 sec) is a thriller directed by David Kew and Neil Thompson from a Paul Abbott and Jimmy Dowdall script.

In the process of clearing her brother Vipon's (Sebastian Nanena) name, Deeva embarks on a travelogue of the worst side of London life: youth prostitution, drugs, corporate corruption, as she gradually pieces together the web in which her brother finds himself caught, encountering prostitute Sally (Kaya Scodelario), thug Tony (Michael Socha) and DCI Stone (Stephen Dillane).

If we take out the logical absurdity of someone in the fashion business developing high levels of skills in detection, then Parminder Nagra (Deeva) does well in carrying the film. The movie is well acted, written and directed, though it doesn’t show or tell us anything we haven’t already seen. It didn’t help that I worked out who the real bad guy was about half way through.

The makers have used a lot of aerial shots of London to give the film scope, which works well in distinguishing this from the high end of television drama, although one suspects that the fade to black transitions between set up make the film almost perfect for showing on commercial television.

The DVD disc has a number of extras, none of them particularly substantial. The interview gallery has eight interviews, but as these are all less than a minute and a half long, some even shorter, there is little of substance here. You get a Cast and Crew Featurette (4 min, 38 sec) and the trailer (2 min, 05 sec), the disc is rounded off with two music videos: Ascension (4 min, 15 sec) and Bang Goes the Beat (2 min, 42 sec).

It’s not a bad film and would have made a superior piece of television, but as a theatrical movie it remains a competent thriller.

6

Charles Packer