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Reviews Counted:20
Fresh:2
Rotten:18
Average Rating:3.9/10
Consensus: Poor performances, stiff dialogue, flat characters, and an unimaginative stab at the mood of the Guy Ritchie crime caper make Dead Man Running into a hooligan tale with little to offer.
Rated: 15
Theatrical Release:30-10-2009
If Guy Ritchie lost interest while making another cockney-geezer caper and tried to get himself sacked by deliberately turning in half-hearted work, the result of his non-efforts might look something like this film.
A little uncertain in tone, but brisk and likely to go down well with the patrons of Albert Square's Queen Vic.
The real issue is that these are all stock characters with nothing to say, which leaves them feeling stiff and uninteresting.
It has a quality cast, but we’ve run round this track too many times, while the script jogs from scene to scene without any surprises.
Top CriticThis budget-conscious, simplistically plotted and often cringingly performed crime caper is not quite as inauspicious a producing debut as one might have expected.
Top CriticToo dark and cumbersome as a comedy, too weak and unlikely as a drama, this retro Ritchie wannabe has an eye-catching cast but can't decide between the cartoon and the kitchen sink.
Top CriticDead Man Running feels like something cobbled together after a cynical producer saw Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and decided to cash in. Except it is ten years too late.
Top CriticIt'll shift serious DVD units, and is not as bad as it could have been.
Top CriticWithout a steady build of tension, 90 minutes ends up feeling like two hours. More like Dead Man Plodding.
Neither a total shambles or a triumph, it should appeal to fans of the cockney crime genre. Anyone else may find it a right pain in the Khyber.
The combined effect is amiable rubbish embodied by Dyer, who continues to walk a tightrope between laughing stock and national treasure.
It ticks all the right boxes for the Brit crime genre and won't disappoint fans of Guy Ritchie's oeuvre, even if it lacks the flair that once made the latter's films so popular.
About as entertaining as a goalless draw at Accrington Stanley.
Alongside football hooliganism, mad cow disease and Joss Stone, the modern British crime movie may be the export of which we're least proud.
This British gangster movie has nicked the style and plot of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, well, er, lock and stock.
Is there any way of stemming the flow of post-Guy Ritchie cockney crime comedies? Would, say, sticking Danny Dyer's head on a pike somewhere in Bethnal Green be enough of a deterrent? Because I for one would be willing to pay that price.
Dead Man Running feels like the last gasp of the Guy Ritchie dodgy deals and diamond geezers genre.
To be fair, as Danny Dyer movies go, Dead Man Running is better than average, thanks to his likeable chemistry with Hassan and a lively, if predictable plot.
The plot's a total shambles. The message (rob, pillage and snort your way to a no-consequences happy ending) stinks.
This increasingly shaggy dog story won't convince you there's any mileage left in the cockney gangster thriller – no matter how much all involved believe there is.
| Tomatometer Percentage | Movie | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 100% | The Red Shoes | 11/12 |
| 88% | Unmade Beds | 11/12 |
| 71% | Where the Wild Things Are | 11/12 |
| 67% | Carriers | 11/12 |
| 40% | The Limits of Control | 11/12 |
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