FILM REVIEW - 51st STATE
Very funny Lock Stock like comedy gangster film with lots of
violence and an incredible amount of swearing, Sam Jackson is a kilt
wearing Californian Gangster (driven into drug dealing by being busted on taking his first illegal joint right after graduation). He is next seen working for Meatloaf as the Lizard King, who Jackson double crosses and tries to have blown up before flying to Liverpool with the formula for a new designer drug, capable of giving the effects of ecstasy, LSD and Cocaine in one instant rush or so he
says, - various gangs tear each other apart to get at him and Meatloaf is still after him too.
Jackson's best mate is Robert Carlylse, a footie mad
courier who just wants tickets for a Liverpool cup final, (at one point
Carlylsle misses an important pick up time just to go to Manchester specially to
slag off a whole pub full of United fans who he fire bombs and then
legs it - the heroine, a drop dead gorgeous assassin who never misses
is also good, when she goes home to Mum, her mum says "You still shooting people? What sort of living is that for a girl in this day and age?"
Ricky Tomlinson is great as a piles suffering fixer with a need to sit on rubber cushions and his demise scene is a classic, - already shot and dying he is tortured by a bull cop in a warehouse by being strapped under a freightliner lorry container raised to the ceiling in chains, -when his torturer asks his mate to lower it, the crate is dropped instantly flush to the floor... to which torturer cop says to mate "Oh, God, you've really *!!! excelled yourself this time."
On the brink of arrest as he hands out the placebo drug at a rave
Jackson scowls "Can't a brother just deal some drugs in peace for once?"
Carlysle finds his driver has left behind a drug-dealer's chemist who has been annoying them for some time but who they need for an arrangement -Carlyse asks his mate to go back and "Take care of him," meaning bring him back, safely, but his mate brings him back dead in the boot of the car, having totally misunderstood the meaning of "take care of him" Lots of funny one-liners throughout - I really liked this one.
Arthur Chappell