Mike McCahill 

North v South review – Romeo and Juliet caught up in gang war

Despite its semi-interesting premise, a new take on star-crossed lovers, Steven Nesbit’s low-budget Brit gangster flick fails to deliver
  
  

Freema Agyeman in North v South.
Stop pincing about … Freema Agyeman in North v South. Photograph: Paul Stephenson/North South Films

This week’s geezerfest has a semi-interesting premise – dividing up a bizarro Britain along Romeo and Juliet lines, as blossoming young love threatens the tenuous truce between regional heavies – but no sense of how to develop it. Instead, variably grizzled types (Bernard Hill and Freema Agyeman repping the north; Steven Berkoff and Keith Allen the south) sit around picking their teeth and casually lobbing C-bombs at one another, while a florid Elliott Tittensor voiceover strives to assure us the stakes are being raised. With writer-director Steve Nesbit preoccupied with delaying his under-budgeted action, an odd listlessness takes over: you just want Danny Dyer to stroll on and tell everyone to stop poncing about.

 

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