3/10
Three muppets get shot
28 February 2013
There are now three movies on the 1995 Rettendon murders, if I have counted correctly. In chronological order: Essex Boys, The Rise Of The Foot Soldier, and now The Fall Of The Essex Boys. The former is a conventional feature movie (starring Sean Bean), the latter two use a documentary-style approach with first-person narrators. The Fall Of The Essex Boys tries to be the hardest of them all, it almost feels as if the narrator is spitting into your ear ("It didn't take long for the near gear to spread frough Essex like an effing virus.") The actors are all trying a bit to hard to appear tough as nails and their overdone Cockney accents quickly begin to grate. At the same time, it does a bad job at recounting at least a semblance of a plot. All three movies revel in machism and violence. If that's your cuppa, I recommend The Rise Of The Footsoldier, to which The Fall Of The Essex Boys has nothing to add (except maybe more plump-breasted birds).

The fact that a fairly conventional triple gangland murder still spawns movies twenty years later tells you what a quiet little place Old Blighty really is.
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