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Review: 'The Sweeney' Is Cliché After Cliché To The Point Of Parody

  • By Gabe Toro
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  • March 3, 2013 11:22 AM
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  • 6 Comments
Reviews
"We’re The Sweeney, and you’ve just been nicked," barks Ray Winstone (plus or minus a few expletives) about three separate times during U.K. actioner "The Sweeney," and it’s the biggest tip-off that this is based on an established property. "The Sweeney" never made it stateside, though the television series ran for four seasons in the '70s; a cop show that broke new ground in depicting the British boys in blue as both fallible and heroically corrupt and on the take as they smashed heads to keep citizens safe from violent crime.
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More: Review, Ray Winstone, The Sweeney, Ben Drew, Hayley Atwell, Nick Love, Damian Lewis

Interview: 'The Sweeney' Star Ray Winstone Talks Rappers, Filming Aronofsky's 'Noah' & How Much Fun He Had On 'Indiana Jones'

  • By Drew Taylor
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  • March 2, 2013 1:20 PM
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  • 0 Comments
Interviews
Ray Winstone is one of those brilliant actors who has a chameleonic ability to totally lose himself in his characters (whether it’s the retired thief in Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant “Sexy Beast” or the Bostonian gangster in Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed”), while remaining 100% Winstonian. In his new film, “The Sweeney,” an adaptation of a hugely influential '70s British cop series, Winstone plays Jack Regan, a morally nebulous leader of a crack crime force. We got to talk to the actor about adapting such an iconic series, what it was like working with British rapper Plan B, and how he goes about choosing his roles. We also bugged him about motion capture animation, the fate of Nick Cave’s “The Death of Bunny Munro,” what “Noah” was like, and if he had any dirt on filming the infamous “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (yes he was in that).
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More: Ray Winstone, The Sweeney, Noah, Plan B, Ben Drew, Nick Love, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Watch: Exclusive Clip From 'The Sweeney' Introduced By Ray Winstone

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • February 26, 2013 10:58 AM
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  • 1 Comment
News
While on this side of the ocean "The Sweeney" may not be a familiar title, in the UK it's something of a touchstone. The British crime series only ran for four seasons during the 1970s, but it was enough to make a tremendous creative and cultural impact, serving as inspiration for recent show "Life On Mars." And while "The Sweeney" spawned two films in 1977 and 1978, it has been refreshed for a new generation, bringing cops Jack Regan and John Carter back into action.
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More: Ray Winstone, Ben Drew, Hayley Atwell, The Sweeney, Nick Love, Damian Lewis

Watch: John Hillcoat's NSFW Video For Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds' "Jubilee Street" Featuring Ray Winstone

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • February 4, 2013 2:21 PM
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  • 1 Comment
News
As longtime collaborators, John Hillcoat and Nick Cave are never too far apart when it comes their various cinematic and musical projects. On the movie front, the pair go all the way back to Hillcoat's directorial debut "Ghosts...Of The Civil Dead" which Cave co-wrote and starred in, while last year they both brought their talents to "Lawless." Meanwhile, when Cave gets back in the studio, Hillcoat is usually around to help get a distinctive music video out in the world.
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More: John Hillcoat, Nick Cave, Ray Winstone

Watch: Trailer For Brit Cop Thriller 'The Sweeney' Starring Ray Winstone & Hayley Atwell

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • January 22, 2013 3:33 PM
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  • 2 Comments
News
How's this for confidence? Months before the movie opened in the U.K., Vertigo Films felt so good about their big screen version of the cult Brit TV cop show "The Sweeney," that they got development going on a sequel. Now whether that actually comes to pass remains to be seen (it divided critics and really, no one seems to be clamoring for one) but U.S. audiences will get a taste later this spring when it lands stateside. And a new trailer has arrived to get the word out.
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More: The Sweeney, Film Trailers, Ray Winstone, Hayley Atwell

An Evil Cloud? Ray Winstone Looking To Take Villain Role In Darren Aronofsky's 'Noah'

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • June 11, 2012 9:48 PM
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  • 5 Comments
News
So what exactly is the villain going to be in Darren Aronofsky's "Noah"? A talking raincloud? The guy at the lumber yard who jacks up his prices with the storm of all time on the way? A rival ark builder? Your guess is as good as ours, but it seems the director has found his man.
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More: Noah, Ray Winstone

Watch: Ray Winstone & Rapper Plan B Do Things Their Own Way In Teaser Trailer For 'The Sweeney'

  • By Simon Dang
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  • April 3, 2012 8:20 AM
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  • 0 Comments
News
After years in development, last year saw the resurfacing of the film adaptation of seminal British cop series "The Sweeney" by Vertigo Films, with "The Football Factory" helmer Nick Love directing. Well, the first teaser trailer for the movie has now been unveiled, and it's more or less what you'd expect from a buddy cop pic starring regular badass Ray Winstone and rapper Plan B, also known as Ben Drew.
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More: Ray Winstone, The Sweeney, Plan B

Ray Winstone Says John Hillcoat & Nick Cave's 'The Death Of Bunny Munro' "Will Make 'Shame' Look Like Teletubbies"

  • By Kevin Jagernauth
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  • January 27, 2012 12:50 PM
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  • 1 Comment
News
It has been a long time since we heard anything about Nick Cave's "The Death Of Bunny Munro," so we'll bring you back up to speed. First conceived as a script, when Cave couldn't get it produced he turned the story into a novel that is on bookshelves now. But in a little bit of an ironic twist, in 2009 it was reported that Cave's regular collaborator John Hillcoat ("The Road," "The Proposition," "The Wettest County") was going to adapt it for British televison. Then in the summer of 2010 Cave revealed that Ray Winstone was interested in the lead role, and then...nothing since. But the hope is still alive.
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More: The Death Of Bunny Munro, Ray Winstone, Nick Cave, John Hillcoat

Sequel To Ray Winstone TV Revival 'The Sweeney' Already In The Works Before First Film Is Released

  • By Oliver Lyttelton
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  • January 4, 2012 11:02 AM
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  • 1 Comment
News
In Hollywood, barely anything is greenlit without the prospect of a sequel already percolating in the minds of studio executives (you can be sure that somewhere, there's a serviette with plot outlines for "We Bought A Zoo Too," "J. Edgars" and "My Week With Marilyn: Tokyo Drift"), but in the U.K., this phenomenon is much rarer. It's hard enough to get a film made, let alone get anyone to see the thing, and thus it's not often that filmmakers count their chickens before they hatch and start development on a sequel without knowing that they've got a hit in the bag. 
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More: The Sweeney, Nick Love, Ray Winstone, Ben Drew

'Captain America' Star Hayley Atwell Joins Ray Winstone & Plan B In TV Cop Remake 'The Sweeney'

  • By Oliver Lyttelton
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  • October 28, 2011 1:37 AM
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  • 5 Comments
'Homeland' Lead Damian Lewis & Steven Mackintosh Also In Cast"Captain America: The First Avenger" was a funny one, wasn't it? The first half was the best superhero of the year, the second, a plotless, uneven mess. But it had many pleasures, and first among them was Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter. Given an unusually well-drawn female character for a comic book movie to get her teeth into, the British actress, a relative unknown in the U.S. who took the role after it was turned down by the likes of Keira Knightley and Emily Blunt, knocked it out of the park, proving feisty, kick-ass, and vulnerable, often within the same scene, showing wider audiences what many have known since her debut in BBC drama "The Line of Beauty" -- she's going to be a massive star.
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More: Films, Actors, Actresses, Nick Love, TV Remakes, Ray Winstone, Ben Drew, Hayley Atwell, The Sweeney

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