We Still Steal the Old Way   Starring: Ian Ogilvy, Julian Glover, Chris Ellison, Deborah Moore and Billy Mummy Distributor: Kaleidoscope Entertainment RRP: £TBC Certificate: 18 Release Date: 17 April 2017

The Archer gang plan an audacious robbery, but this is just a front, an effort to get sent to remand prison. Banged up in prison their old friend, George Briggs, needs to be sprung as his wife is terminally ill and the prison has denied him the right to see her. The plan gets into trouble when another con, Vic Farrow, finds out that Richie Archer is behind bars and sets his own plan in place to kill him…

We Still Steal the Old Way (2017. 1 hr, 34 min, 12 sec) is a crime drama, directed by Sacha Bennett, the film is a sequel to We Still Kill the Old Way (2014).

There are some actors who have successfully made a career of referencing their past cinematic exploits either by playing their more younger roles for laughs or they seem to want to ignore the passage of time in less successful attempts to recapture past glories.

We Steal is the latter type of film with a bunch of fine actors who have been miscast. I get that they are supposed to be old school villains, containing a code of behaviour which means that they will go to any lengths to free their friend from prison even at the cost of risking their own, but the film is unable to provide enough finesse to make this believable.

The basic problem with this is that any sequence which involves them in action is laughably weak. This is not to say that this weakness pervades all the film or that age alone makes them any less good as actors. The overall lack of resources combined with the actors loss of physicality makes sequences like the prison riot far from convincing.

The initial raid, a bunch of old school villains breaking into a safety deposit vault, is a nice little slice of art imitating life and the smaller and more intimate interactions are played well, but overall the weak script does not serve its cast well, containing lots of clichés and tropes left over from better films.

Ian Ogilvy takes the lead as Richie, the head of the gang with Lysette Anthony reprising her role as his main squeeze. Julian Glover appears as the corrupt banker, Sir Edward, from whom the gang steal the gold, but he is terribly underused for such a great character actor. Billy Murray, is probably the most consistently good throughout the film even though he is playing the sort of hard nose villain which has become his bread and butter.

The film arrives with a choice of two audio track 2.0 and 5.1 and apart from a little more space in the 5.1 mix this isn’t the sort of movie which requires more than the basic track. There is a ‘Making of’ documentary (13 min, 35 sec) which is oddly enough quite informative.

5

Charles Packer