Blitz

Director: Elliott Lester
Starring: Jason Statham, Paddy Considine, Aidan Gillen
Time Out rating:

How can a film which gets so much wrong be so thoroughly enjoyable? Blitz has dialogue so ripe you can almost smell it, plot holes you could drive a truck through and a plank of wood in the lead role. It’s laughably derivative, politically dubious, wildly overbearing and incredibly silly. It’s also cracklingly paced, blissfully unsophisticated and enormous fun. Much of this is due to the casting: Jason Statham is typically lifeless as a violently troubled East End cop on the edge, allowing Paddy Considine to steal the limelight as his by-the-book gay sidekick. But it’s Aiden Gillen who takes top honours as the titular madcap cop killer, channeling the young Gary Oldman into a performance of self-mocking cool and giddy psychotic subversion. It’s a fine-looking film, too: director Elliott Lester gives London a slick but eerily beautiful MTV sheen, and his action work is crunchily compelling. It’s hard to know how seriously anyone besides Statham is taking this – but that only adds to its absurd, cock-eyed charm.

Blitz opens nationwide on October 15