Christmas Karma (2025)

While there are good and bad things in Christmas Karma, one of my favourite things wasn't really to do with the film itself. I was most amused the the potential reaction to the film by red-faced "patriots" who might find their noses put out of joint as they started to moan about "bloody foreigners, coming over here, and repurposing our classic Dickensian Christmas tales." Considering the constant attempts to get everyone worked up over some (non-existent) war on Christmas, and considering the recent extra toxicity surrounding discussions on immigration, asylum seekers, and national identity, Christmas Karma feels almost deliciously well-timed.

You know the story, which means I can just go through the main players. Kunal Nayyar plays Eshaan Sood (uttering "Bakwaas!" as the Hindi/Urdu equivalent of "Bah, humbug!"). Leo Suter and Pixie Lott are Bob and Mary Cratchit, respectively, complete with a set of children that includes a Tiny Tim (Freddie Marshall-Ellis). Danny Dyer is a black cab driver who helps to bookend things, Eva Longoria is the Ghost Of Christmas Past, Billy Porter is the Ghost Of Christmas Present, and, ummmm, Boy George is the Karma Chamel . . . I mean . . . the Ghost Of Christmas Future. Hugh Bonneville is hard to recognise as Marley, Allan Corduner is Mr. Fezzywig, and Charithra Chandran is a lost love named Bea Fernandez.

Adapted from the source material and directed by Gurinder Chadha, Christmas Karma doesn't get off to the best start. It feels a bit clumsy, and may well make others cringe as I did. The songs aren't great, which is an extra stumbling block for a musical, despite the whole thing being worked on by Gary Barlow, Shaznay Lewis (also onscreen very briefly), and Nitin Sawhney, and there are some major weak spots in the casting of the supporting players. Things pick up once Sood is whisked away by the Ghost Of Christmas Past though, and the use of the familiar tale to explore the immigrant experience, as well as wealth disparity, allows for everything to feel like a very worthwhile wander back through this well-trodden path. Then it sadly gets stuck again when Boy George appears and just looks as if he's loitering around until enough people notice that he's sulking.

It's always clear to see what Chadha is aiming for, which makes it even more of a shame when a few of the sequences just don't work, either due to the cast, the staging of a musical number, or just the familiarity of certain moments working against it. While I don't remember any of the tunes right now, there is at least one decent number in the beginning, middle, and end of this. That helps, and it's interesting that it's the more uplifting and celebratory songs that work best, perhaps due to them requiring some more choreography and . . . fun.  

It's a bit jarring to see Nayyar playing older than his actual age, and he is unsteady in the earliest scenes when he has to be miserly and mean without viewers seeing any of the background, but the performance really starts to work better once Sood is free of normal laws of space and time. Suter, Lott, and Marshall-Ellis aren't very good, I'm sorry to say, and that makes this particular incarnation of the Cratchit family a bit harder to care for than many others we've seen over the years. Longoria is fun, Porter brings some essential colour and joie de vivre to his role, and Dyer at least feels like a standard cheeky London cab driver. Chandran is very good in her role, aka the one who got away, and there are a lot of cast members with less screentime delivering very good work as they help to show a backstory that involves our lead being forcibly wrenched from his home in Uganda to start life anew here in Britain.

This isn't a new classic, compared to other Christmas movies and compared to other interpretations of A Christmas Carol, but it's a good attempt to mix the old and the new, and the way it reworks the backstory of the main character is admirable. I would rewatch it, but only if others had decided to hijack my TV for a couple of hours.

6/10

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Tinsel Town (2025)

It's no surprise to find that Tinsel Town is directed by Chris Foggin. He's done comforting family-friendly fare a few times now, and has at least one other Christmas movie under his belt. The surprise comes from the fact that this formulaic bit of fun needed at least three main writers, as well as additional material from three other contributors (apparently). Maybe that's why it's so inconsistent though. Some of the expected scenes fall flat, but a few moments really hit the spot. And I was pleasantly surprised to find the panto moments actually feeling like panto moments.

Kiefer Sutherland stars here as Bradley Mack, a movie star who has coasted along on the success of an action movie franchise for some time now. He's not viewed as a great actor though, nor as a great human being. In fact, he's lazy, entitled, and about to crash back down to earth when his agent send him for a theatre gig in England that is actually panto in a small village. There's no way out of it. Bradley can't afford the price it would cost to wangle out of the contract he signed without reading it. So he ends up grumpy in the company of Cassandra (Meera Syal), Jill (Rebel Wilson), a pair of ugly sisters (Asim Chaudhry and Jason Manford), among others. On the plus side, he can spend some quality time with his young daughter, Emma (Matilda Firth). If he can stop being so selfish and self-pitying for long enough.

There's certainly fun to be had here. The lead character being bamboozled by his English village surroundings, and the very notion of panto, allows for some chuckles, as does the occasional angry outburst. There's even an effective musical number for Sutherland, while his character is in his full costume for Buttons, his panto role. The expected transformation of our lead isn't handled very well though, it's more a series of sudden turnarounds than a gradual journey to a much better place, and a few elements feel like they should have some more impact on the plot. Danny Dyer is a local bad boy, Kieran, who antagonises people, but could have ultimately been left out of the movie. The same goes for a minor sub-plot about a number of local burglaries, which may or may not have been sanctioned by Kieran.

While Foggin directs well enough, the awkward screenplay leaves everything in the hands of the cast. Sutherland is a big plus in the main role, and game enough to fully embrace his panto turn (once his character finds out that there's no way out of it), Katherine Ryan has a few fun moments as the angry agent, and young Firth does well as the child who retains faith in a man that many others have long since given up on. Derek Jacobi also brings something special to the project, especially in a key scene that explains how someone can keep the theatre at the heart of their life. Wilson isn't so good, to put it mildly. Not only is she stuck delivering a standard dramatic turn, she's also required to do so (for some reason) with a Yorkshire accent. It's not a great delivery, and that choice feels like it could have been easily swerved with one explanatory line of dialogue. Chaudhry and Manford are fun, Lucien Laviscount and Savannah Lee Smith are pleasant enough, and Dyer does what Dyer does. Alice Eve and James Lance are sadly wasted though, and it's a shame that the actual Yorkshire setting isn't given more of a supporting role.

The good just about outweighs the bad, but it's a very close call. The extra writers seem to have tried to overstuff the runtime, the cast could all have been given pages for at least three very different films, and there's a disappointing lack of full-on Christmas sweetness for the majority of the runtime. It really nails that panto atmosphere at times though, and the final scenes are sweet, funny, and rewarding. Which means it should at least leave you with a smile on your face as the end credits roll.

5/10

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Prime Time: Assassin (2015)

Look, I don’t actually hate Danny Dyer. I rarely think he is the best actor for any role (one or two major highlights aside), and many of his movies have been amusingly incompetent, but I still always root for him to pick better films to star in. Unfortunately, he seems to think that his bread and butter comes from British movies in which he can portray a tough lead. And maybe that is where his bread and butter comes from. But it never leads to his best work.

Dyer is Jamie, the titular assassin. He is hired by two crooks (played by Gary and Martin Kemp) to kill off a competitor. Which he does. But not before coincidentally sleeping with Chloe (Holly Weston), who happens to be the daughter of the soon-to-be-dead crook. Complications ensue, and Jamie shows himself to be a terrible choice of assassin, although we’re supposed to think he is still a most excellent and capable killer.

Written and directed by J. K. Amalou, this film is so carelessly thrown together, with everything leading to a final ten minutes that is supposed to feel like a satisfying finale, that it borders on the outright insulting. Dyer at no point seems like a good fit for the main role, and none of the other characters are written to seem at all convincing.

The cast cannot really be bothered. They have been paid, maybe get some free food and drink as they spend time in between scenes, and half-heartedly recite lines from a script they must know is just dire. There’s no style, no decent score to help, nothing to help distract from the awfulness of it all.

As for Dyer, he walks through his performance looking as if, moments before the camera started rolling, he was just woken up from a nap and asked to reel off the first twenty integers of pi. In the pantheon of Dyer performances, this ranks as one of his very worst.

Nobody livens up the material, no part of the plot gives you something to care about (either due to the laughably weak characters or the editing removing any tension from the sequences that are supposed to be standouts), and this is a film destined to be forgotten by everyone, until you see fifty copies of it on a shelf in your nearest Poundland store.

2/10

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The Business (2005)

"My old man wrote me a letter from prison once. It said if you don't want to end up in here, stay away from crime, women and drugs. Trouble is, that don't leave you much else to do, does it?"

That quote starts The Business, and it's not a bad start. In fact, the first act of The Business is quite a pleasant surprise. And then it starts to go downhill, leading to a third act that has lines of dialogue like the following: "The good thing about losing everything is there was nothing else to lose."

Danny Dyer plays Frankie, a young lad who ends up heading from London to Spain when he needs to lay low for some time. He delivers a bag to the charismatic Charlie (Tamer Hassan), a club owner and big cheese in town. Charlie works with his hot-headed partner, Sammy (Geoff Bell). And what follows is the rise and fall of some typical British gangster types.

Written and directed by Nick Love (who apparently didn't meet a FILA-wearing thug he didn't like), The Business is a mass of things you've seen done before, and done better. It glamorises the lifestyle shown onscreen, despite the section showing the downfall of certain characters, and it accompanies many scenes with a lively '80s soundtrack.

Which isn't to say that this isn't a fun watch when it is getting some things right. It's hard to not enjoy watching people swan about in sunny Spain while some great tunes are playing, but the fun factor starts to disappear as soon as, well, the fun disappears. 

Dyer does a good job in the main role. It’s well within his wheelhouse, of course, but he does everything well, particularly in the early scenes that have him trying to do well while being a lot less cocky than he becomes later. Hassan is the big-hearted, “good”, criminal boss, for the most part, and it’s one of his better roles. And Bell gets to be the typical psycho who causes things to spiral. Not forgetting Georgina Chapman, the woman who turns heads, and knows it. Chapman does fine in a role that is typical of how women are viewed by these kinds of characters. Other familiar faces appear in small roles, but the focus remains on Dyer, Hassan, Bell, and Chapman. 

Although not for everyone, and there are probably a number of people who will enjoy it for all the wrong reasons, this is quite an easy film to enjoy if you are in the mood for what it is aiming to provide. It’s one of the better movies that Dyer has done. Although that isn’t saying much, considering he is an actor with Run For Your Wife in his filmography. 

4/10

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April Fools: Run For Your Wife (2012)

Oh god. Oh my god. My eyes. My brain. My eyes. I expected Run For Your Wife to be bad (you'll struggle to find a kind word said about it anywhere and the limited cinema screening was a financial embarrassment) but I didn't expect it to be THIS bad. It's ONLY saved from the lowest score possible by the many fleeting cameo appearances from numerous older stars of stage and screen, which allowed me to distract myself from the pain by spotting people and trying to remember what they were best known for. Rolf Harris, Barry Cryer, Cliff Richard, Vicki Michelle, Robin Askwith, Judi Dench (how could you?) and many others turn up for a few seconds to join in with the fun, although I use the word in its loosest sense.

The plot concerns cheeky, lovable taxi driver (John Smith, played by Danny Dyer) getting hit on the head as he helps an old woman keep her handbag away from some thieves, and ending up in hospital. This makes his wife (Denise Van Outen) very worried when she realises that he didn't make it home from his shift. It also makes his other wife (Sarah Harding) very worried when she realises that he hasn't made it home from his shift. Yes, John has two wives. And now he has to do whatever it takes to stop them from finding out about each other. He ropes in his mate (Neil Morrissey) to help him, as the police want some questions answered and the local press want to do an interview with such a have-a-go hero.

This is truly awful stuff. I'm pretty sure that Danny Dyer sold his last ounce of shame about five years ago, probably in exchange for a packet of baking soda that someone convinced him was top-grade cocaine, but the other members of the cast might want to buy up every last copy of this DVD so that nobody else ever sees it. Van Outen is, surely, capable of much better than the shrill performance that she gives here, accompanied by plenty of horrible mugging. Morrissey has done plenty of comedy in his past, and has been very good at it, so he should have known better. Sarah Harding gets a pass, I guess, as the newcomer to the acting world, but her awful performance makes me hope that she doesn't try her hand at comedy again, ever. And Ben Cartwright, as the policeman trying to unravel the messy situation, struggles to get out of the whole thing with his dignity intact. He fails, but he at least tries harder than anyone else. Kellie Shirley really needs to start over, as I think she has the potential to be much better, and the least said about the stereotypes portrayed by Christopher Biggins and Lionel Blair the better.

Written and co-directed by Ray Cooney (John Luton is the other credited director), based on his stage play, this is a relic of a bygone age that hasn't been updated or improved for modern audiences, as far as I can tell. It's cringe-inducing, at best, and downright insulting on many occasions. None of the women are capable of more than panicking at the most minor mishap, or being duped by their beloved husband, and I already mentioned the characters portrayed by Biggins and Blair.

Awful, awful, awful. I don't condone violence but advise that if you ever see anyone about to buy this then you slap them in the face, just to bring them back to their senses. It's the worst British film that I've seen in decades, and the worst Danny Dyer film by far. And THAT is saying something.

2/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Run-your-Wife-DVD-2012/dp/B00CLRGWJS/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1397078273&sr=1-1&keywords=run+for+your+wife

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Deviation (2012)

Saying that Deviation isn't the worst movie that Danny Dyer has ever starred in is a bit like saying that the damage to your social life isn't the worst thing about having the Ebola virus. Either way, you're in a whole world of pain. I've long ago stopped expecting anything other than the same lazy, wide-boy geezer act in every one of his movies and he hasn't done anything to prove me wrong in the last five years or so.

Writer/director J. K. Amalou is the latest person to give Dyer some time onscreen and pocket money to spend on Burberry and substances designed to further destroy his braincells which makes him the person to point the finger at. He picked Dyer for the main role, he wrote the awful script that Dyer gets to work with and he directed the movie in a . . . . . . . . . well, to be fair, the direction of the film isn't TOO bad in places. Dammit, I hate being fair-minded sometimes.

Dyer plays Frank Norton, a murderer and a geezer. Which means that he just turns in yet another lazy, wide-boy geezer act mentioned in the opening paragraph. His character appears only a minute or two into the movie, taking a nurse (Amber, played by Anna Walton) hostage and driving around to different places for no obvious reason, other than padding the idea out to feature film length. His background is relayed to viewers during a clumsy moment when he fiddles with the car radio during various news reports. Which sums up the entire film.

Anna Walton does slightly better than Dyer, but she's hampered by two big problems. The first is that terrible script. The second is the fact that she has to continually share the screen with Dyer. The main role wouldn't be good for any actor, the character of Norton changes his mind and mood every few minutes in a way that is supposed to be interesting and clever but comes across as juvenile and silly. It's serious mental illness as written by a ten-year-old. The erratic performance from Dyer is, subsequently, a complete shambles, a car crash of a performance reminding everyone of the big question: "just how does this man continue to get work?" The rest of the cast includes James Doherty, David Fynn, Alan McKenna and Roy Smiles, but it's Dyer you'll be unable to forget, for all the wrong reasons, after the end credits roll.

As I said earlier, the direction isn't too bad. It's competent, and the only element of the movie I can bring myself to praise (even though it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to do so). The rest, in case you couldn't read my subtle cues, is terrible. Implausible, impossible to care about, horribly misanthropic and down at the bottom of the septic tank with so many other Danny Dyer movies.

2/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Deviation-Blu-ray-Danny-Dyer/dp/B00696WONU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1366761348&sr=8-2&keywords=deviation

Freerunner (2011)

Horrible, just horrible. Freerunner is, annoyingly, a half-decent premise surrounded by a complete turd of a movie. One or two decent stunts save it from being the worst of the worst but it's such a lazy, poorly executed film that I actually felt angry while watching it.

I don't know what's more unbelievable. The fact that I have continued to try to convince myself that one day the likes of Danny Dyer and Tamer Hassan will one day appear in another decent film or the fact that it took THREE writers to cobble together this nonsense.

Mind you, while the writing is bad it's almost par for the course for this kind of film - the emphasis is, at least, on the action. I'm not letting Matthew Chadwick, Jeremy Sklar and Raimond Huber completely off the hook but most of the blame should be passed on to director Lawrence Silverstein, who took a movie all about freerunning (a smooth and entertaining pursuit) and decided to let all of the action scenes look as if they had been filmed by a pack of dogs who just happened to be in the vicinity.

Tamer Hassan plays yet another onscreen hard man, Danny Dyer is a cocky arsehole and there are a bunch of freerunners who run about the city, snatching flags while people bet on the results. Sean Faris plays Ryan, a freerunner who wants out and decides that he will get someone to bet a LOT of money on his final race, allowing him to retire a rich man. For some reason, he sees happiness in his future with his girlfriend Chelsea (played, HORRIBLY, by Rebecca De Costa - I mean, seriously, I am tempted to start a Kickstarter campaign to just pay her off so that she never acts again). Unfortunately, that all goes to pot when the runners are all gassed and wake up to find that they have exploding necklaces on and must now race for something much more important than money. That's the plot, in a nutshell.

Taking a number of elements from a number of superior movies (off the top of my head I'll namecheck Wedlock, Battle Royale, The Tournament and District 13) and then draining them of all fun before throwing them to the bottom of a barrel that is then filled to the brim with excrement, Freerunner is a waste of time and it's more frustrating because it's not a complete waste of time. The core idea is sound, it's just developed so poorly.

It doesn't help that nobody onscreen appears to have gone to any actual acting classes. Hassan is in the movie for a very short amount of time so almost escapes unscathed . . . . until we get to his awful last scene. Dyer just gets worse and worse in every movie recently and I'm starting to get embarrassed for him. No doubt he would be a geezer about it and tell me not to shed any tears while he was quids in and having a good laugh but I spent more time than most people fighting his corner (based on his fun turns in Severance, Human Traffic, The Football Factory and even Mean Machine) and this is the last straw. I'll still end up watching his movies, to review them, but I'll always brace myself for the worst rather than hope for something better. Sean Faris is pretty bland, I already mentioned that Rebecca De Costa was awful and Casey Durkin is stuck with providing all of the exposition for those who weren't able to keep up with the complex plot. Oh, she also bares her breasts for a second to keep male viewers happy - it feels very much like a halfway "restore point" compared to how tough going the movie is. Ryan Doyle is a tough, win-at-all-costs, freerunner but he's just as bland as Faris. In fact, only Joe Zamora and Tony Vo stand amongst their fellow runners and gamblers while the much older Seymour Cassel shows everyone how acting SHOULD be in his short amount of screentime.

In case I haven't made myself clear enough, Freerunner is an awful film with awful camerawork, an awful script and awful acting. Could I do something better with a group of freerunners and my own camera? Get me the freerunners and the equipment and I'll show you. Hell, if the people involved in this movie can keep getting work then I don't see why I can't break in to the industry and easily make something better than this.

3/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freerunner-Blu-ray-Sean-Faris/dp/B007JI9B74/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1351007627&sr=8-2

Basement (2010)

I give up, I really do. It seems that every time I waste my energy defending Danny Dyer in the face of overwhelming negativity he just comes along and shovels another load of manure on top of his increasingly implausible career. The fact that he still gets work at the moment does, I concede, beggar belief but here he is lending his standard geezer schtick to yet another awful British horror movie. This is the kind of movie that easily allows you to misspell his surname as "Dire".

The plot is all about five anti-war protestors who stop off in the middle of their journey home to allow Gary (Danny Dyer) to go and water the plants. That then leads to the group finding the entrance to some underground corridors and, of course, going in and wandering around aimlessly until they become trapped and then find themselves in danger. Never fear, there's a not-so-cunning twist that makes up for the hour or so spent watching people wander along the same bit of set shot from a number of different angles.

Asham Kamboj is the man responsible for directing this piece of rubbish and he also came up with the original idea, developed into the screenplay by Ewen Glass, so he can get most of the blame. The film may only run for about 75 minutes but it feels like it goes on for oh so much longer. Dialogue is, frankly, risible and characterisations are poor.

There's a slight chance that the material could have been lifted by a better cast but that's something that will never be proven, saddled as the film is with Dyer, Jimi Mistry (complete with an awful, exaggerated accent), Emily Beecham, Kierston Wareing and Lois Winstone. Christopher Ellison actually does a good job despite the awful dialogue that he's given but the rest of the cast range from the pretty poor to the downright awful.

There's almost absolutely nothing here to recommend this as a film to watch. One or two ideas would have been interesting if they were in a better movie, here they just crop up as unsurprising revelations after too much has already been revealed before the finale. There's no tension, no decent gore, no sign of intelligence and no real talent on display either behind or in front of the camera.

2/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Basement-DVD-Danny-Dyer/dp/B003QPTVOM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1344965443&sr=8-3

Devil's Playground (2010)

Director Mark McQueen and writer Bart Ruspoli are the men responsible for this British zombie horror movie and it's a shame that they take a few decent moments and ground them in a movie that's just far too derivative and silly to please many fans. The first hurdle it has is the cast (I am possibly the one person I know who likes watching Danny Dyer onscreen), the second hurdle is the familiarity with all of the material and the third, and biggest, hurdle is that this movie features zombies doing parkour. Oh yes, you read that correctly. Freerunning zombies, that's the fresh approach that this film tries to take with the material. Needless to say, it's a stinker of an idea that translates into a number of risible moments within the film.

So, the plot is as follows: Lots of people have been undergoing medical trials for a new wonderdrug and when things go wrong they go REALLY wrong. Everyone is affected badly, all but one - a woman (Angela, played by MyAnna Buring) who the folks in charge now want to get a hold of, what with her possibly possessing some kind of cure that could stop a major epidemic and all that. Craig Fairbrass plays Cole, a man who is used to being given the jobs that need to be done but don't ever need to be admitted to, and he is the one sent to find Angela. Meanwhile, Danny Dyer plays Joe, a cop who used to go out with Angela but had to put the relationship on hold when he went and stupidly shot some kid by accident. These people may be able to help each other survive while crowds of bitey bitey freerunners run amock but they will have to overcome many various difficulties - locations, emotional issues, threats from other people wanting to survive - on the way.

There's very little I can say right now that will win you over if you already think that you're going to dislike this film. Because, let's be honest, you're probably going to dislike this film. The acting is so-so from all involved (as much as I like the lad, Dyer gives an especially poor performance here but Fairbrass is good at what he does and Buring is watchable) while the script is nothing more than a 90 minute game of "spot the reference", be it from 28 Days Later... or the Resident Evil movies or anthing else that has come along since. There's not one original idea here except for the freerunning, and whoever thought of that should be taken to the nearest, large town square available and publically flogged.

There are a few good SFX moments here and there showing the infection taking hold and there are a couple, though not enough, of good gore moments. The rest of the cast at least features people such as Colin Salmon, Jaime Murray, Sean Pertwee, Shane Taylor and Craig Conway so there are a number of familiar faces to support the leads but it's not enough to save the film.

Dear British filmmakers, please note that in any future scripts you may want to develop the word "zombie" should never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever EVER be preceded by the word "freerunning". Thanks.

4/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Playground-DVD-Danny-Dyer/dp/B003B3SQ68