Sweeney 2
Sweeney 2 is a British action film by Euston Films, released cinematically in the UK in 1978. A crime drama about the Flying Squad, a division of London's Metropolitan Police, it was made as a sequel to the successful 1977 film Sweeney!, which was a spin-off from the popular British television series The Sweeney (1974-78). Some of the action in the film is transferred from the usual London setting to Malta.
| Sweeney 2 | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Original British quad poster | |
| Directed by | Tom Clegg |
| Produced by | Ted Childs |
| Written by | Ian Kennedy Martin Troy Kennedy Martin |
| Starring | John Thaw Dennis Waterman Denholm Elliott |
| Music by | Tony Hatch |
| Cinematography | Dusty Miller |
| Edited by | Chris Burt |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | EMI |
Release date |
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Running time | 104 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The series was based upon a fictionalised version of the Flying Squad. The term The Sweeney is derived from Cockney rhyming slang, originating in the expression Sweeney Todd: Flying Squad, and is a real term used by the London underworld to refer to the Squad, whose brief was to investigate armed robbery within the MPD (Metropolitan Police District), an area roughly corresponding to Greater London.
The leader of the Squad is the fictional Detective Inspector Jack Regan (John Thaw), and his second-in-command is Detective Sergeant Carter (Dennis Waterman).
Plot
A group of particularly violent armed robbers, who are committing bank and payroll robberies across London, are taking just £60,000 from each robbery, leaving behind cash in excess of this sum. The robbers are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way: they even kill badly injured members of their team to ensure they cannot inform. As Regan puts it after the first raid, "I've never seen so many dead people". Meanwhile, a b-story takes place in a fancy hotel, with The Flying Squad dealing with a crazy man rigged with a bomb (who turns out to be in the CIA).
A bent senior officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Jupp (Denholm Elliott), is asked to resign over allegations of corruption and, just before leaving his post, instructs his subordinate to take down the gang. The gang, armed with gold-plated Purdey shotguns, evade the Flying Squad for quite some time, leaving a trail which leads Jack Regan to Malta and back, before he finds encouragement from Jupp, who meanwhile has been convicted of corruption because Jack would not testify in court for him.[1]
Cast
- John Thaw as Detective Inspector Jack Regan
- Dennis Waterman as Detective Sergeant George Carter
- Denholm Elliott as ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Jupp
- Ken Hutchison as Hill
- Anna Gaël as Mrs. Hill
- Lewis Fiander as Gorran
- Nigel Hawthorne as Detective Chief Inspector Dilke
- Barry Stanton as Big John
- John Flanagan as Willard
- David Casey as Goodyear
- Derrick O'Connor as Llewelyn
- Frederick Treves as McKyle
- John Alkin as Detective Sergeant Tom Daniels
- James Warrior as Detective Constable Jellyneck
Production
Sweeney 2 is the second feature film based on Ian Kennedy-Martin's original concept for The Sweeney. The first feature film, Sweeney! (1977), followed three series on television.
Barry Spikings of EMI Films said he made the sequel "because there's a demand for it. The first Sweeney film was successful so we're filling the demand by making another one."[2]
As with all the television and cinema outings for Jack Regan's Flying Squad, Sweeney 2 offers a realistic vision of the police and their criminal opponents, conveying what is usually described as a working-class depiction of crime at the sharp end. It's a warts-and-all vision of the police, a far cry from the less gritty world of TV police shows like Dixon of Dock Green which was airing in the mid-1970s on the rival BBC channel.
As seen through Denholm Elliott's character, The Sweeney was not afraid to face the fact that there are such things as bent officers. The character was based on a real-life former head of the Flying Squad, who had been convicted at the Old Bailey on corruption charges in 1977.
The lead characters, Regan and Carter, are depicted as hard-drinking, womanising, no-nonsense characters from a working-class background, who resent the fact that middle-class officers get promoted ahead of them. Regan is forthright, blunt, not frightened to speak his mind. He is, in the euphemism of the time, a rough diamond. He frequently clashes with his superiors, often for no other reason than that they're middle class, and hence are in charge of the likes of him. His immediate boss is a public school-educated paper-pusher, who wouldn't know one end of a gun from the other, and is – in Regan's view – completely unfitted to command an armed unit.
The film tones down the violence and nudity of the previous film, Sweeney! (1977), making this sequel more akin to the television series on which the films were based, and resulting in its release with an AA-certificate (i.e. Restricted to those 14 years and over), instead of the X-certificate (Adults-only) of its predecessor. But the film is nevertheless significantly more violent than the TV series and was re-rated 18 when released on VHS in 1987.
Nigel Hawthorne appears as a bureaucratic senior officer, taking the role usually played in the television series by Garfield Morgan .
As with the previous film, a number of the supporting characters are played by actors who had appeared in the television series, including Lewis Fiander and Frederick Treves.