"The Sweeney" as a TV series was often a sharp,funny and reasonably authentic hour or so of entertainment.Stretched to a full - length feature and opened out it loses much of its impact and immediacy.The change of media does the concept no favours.It's the same old same old fleshed out with a bit of gritty location filming in some of the seedier parts of our capital city.The only aspect that sets it apart from all it's predecessors is the appearance of the late Mr Denholm Elliot as the bent former guv'nor of Regan's squad who with the ambivalence of most of his ilk still wants to see the bad guys put away. Otherwise it's the usual Mullets at fifty paces stuff. The head villain uses a gold Purdey shotgun.A friend of mine on the real Sweeney once nicked a blagger who stole a Purdey worth £30,000,sawed the barrels down,did one over the pavement bringing him less than a third of the value of the shotgun he had stolen and ended up doing a ten.Jack Regan would have enjoyed that.