DVD & BluRay

THE BEZONIANS

101 Films, cert 18; DVD £7.99 & on Digital

This film would like to be Goodfellas, or even a new Guy Richie geezer hit like Smokin’ Barrels - but it fires too many blanks.

It’s, however, original in that its hoodlums aren’t Italian mafia or Cockney charmers, they’re Greek Cypriot and they hang out at The Bezonian, a sleazy North London club. The name means ‘scoundrels’ and these guys are indeed hardened scallywags with few redeeming features.

Writer/director Savvas D. Michael’s foray into the gangster melee is a bit pretentious however. Sorry, but I have to wonder how many fans attracted by the name Vinnie Jones above the title will get the laboured references to Homer’s (no, not Homer Simpson) classical poem, the Iliad.

The club boss is even called Plato (Andreas Karras), but there’s nothing remotely romantic about him. Far from it, he’s a homophobic tyrant who plays the big man to his bunch of petty crooks, one a tough guy who’s a bit of a heel, and fittingly called Achilles, played by the director himself, whose previous films include Original Gangster.

The Bezonian is built into the DNA of the Greek Londoners, it was where their fathers and grandfathers gambled away their pitiful wages and let their hair down, but Plato puts it all at risk when he gets into a highstakes poker game with bombshell Lola (Lois Brabin-Platt) and the future of The Bezonian hangs on the turn of a card. He could also be holding a dead man’s hand, because Lola’s boyfriend is stone cold killer Willard Greb (Vinnie - pictured) and he won’t let her be cheated.