THE TOLL review

Following a chance encounter with one of his old adversaries, an unassuming toll booth operator (Michael Smiley) stationed in the middle of nowhere must contend with his dark past catching up with him and the price he will have to pay for it. But with the whole town committing a litany of wrongdoings, it's up to local police office Catrin (Annes Elwy) to keen everyone in check before more trouble arrives in town.

On the Pembrokeshire border where he thought no one from his previous life would ever find him, Smiley's (unnamed) toll booth operator lives a quiet existence, taking a small fee from the few people who pass down his road. However, his status quo is rocked when he's recognised by Elton (Gary Beadle), an old colleague/rival who gave up looking for him twenty years ago. Reporting his whereabouts to big boss Magnus (Julian Glover), Smiley's character has no option but to react accordingly and prepare for retribution to arrive on his doorstep. Meanwhile, local copper Catrin who spends most of her days speed checking cyclists, suddenly finds criminal activity in the town flaring up, with angry Welsh farmers, gun toting triplets, Paul Kaye's lovesick ambulance driver and Iwan Rheon's wannabe hoodlum all landing on her radar. But what, if anything, has this to do with the seemingly law-abiding local toll booth operator?

With a narrative that purposely jumps around the timeline of events, it's not too far into the runtime of The Toll that having just survived a hold up by three balaclava'd youths, Michael Smiley's character says to Elwy's befuddled bobby, "the chronology is confusing, I'll give you that". Thankfully, director Ryan Andrew Hooper's debut feature film and Matt Redd's script is aware enough of genre expectations that it knows when to subvert them and when to lean into them. Sure, for the story to make sense you've got to suspend your disbelief early on to take some of the film's more larger than life characters seriously (Evelyn Mok and Darren Evans's Elvis loving smugglers are high on that list), but the cast are a lively, sprightly bunch that bring a lot of energy to the otherwise remote and sparse countryside where most of the film is set.

In many ways an unapologetic throwback to the twisty-turny, expect the unexpected small time gangster sub-genre that sprang up in the wake of the success of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels; to its credit, The Toll is one of the better ones, offering a cast of colourful characters that make this a breezy 83 minutes to enjoy, with the ever reliable presence of Michael Smiley adding enough of an element of danger to keep us on our toes throughout. Likewise Annes Elwy in what could have been a thankless role, as Catrin, the only person in town with a clear moral compass and drive to do the right thing, brings a lot of warmth to an otherwise chilly affair.

Using its overly complicated plot to mask some of its shortcomings, The Toll is still the best British gangster film in recent memory, with a satisfyingly explosive climax and fine work from Smiley and Elwy.

Verdict

3.5/5

The Toll is in cinemas and on premium digital 27 August from Signature Entertainment 

THE GUV'NOR review

Upon its release in 1998, Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels instantly became one of those films you could completely devour, finding out about who these actors were and where they came from. Did you know Jason Statham used to be an Olympic swimmer? Or that Dexter Fletcher was in The Long, Good Friday as a child? Or that the Cockney henchman used to be a bare knuckle boxer with ties to London gangsters? Guided by his son Jamie, The Guv'nor looks at the history of the man who started out as muscle for hire, became known as 'The King of the Bouncers', and then eventually a film star, Lenny McLean.

Aided by the use of grainy videotape that shows him scrapping in the ring, right from the off the film announces who McLean was, then follows Jamie on a trip around London to try and find out why he was the way he was. Included on Jamie's tour is the run-down shed where his father trained to be a boxer (now a public park), and the location of the nightclub where his father was shot while working on the door (now a Pret a Manger). This was a very different London, and Lenny was tough enough to survive it.

Jamie is a lively cockney geezer, and like his father, a natural in front of the camera. It's clear that Jamie has been delivering stories about his father for his entire life, but that he sees the documentary as a chance to dig a little bit deeper into Lenny's past, despite the reluctance of a number of family members to take part. Still, this absorbing documentary doesn't shy away from talking about the demons that made him the man he was (some that appear to be present in Jamie, albeit diluted), and despite his public history as a boxer and late in life film star, there's still a few things that prove to be revelatory.

His time as a fighter is well documented here, and even goes to the lengths of visiting a modern bare-knuckle boxing match to show how tenacious a fighter he was in comparison. His rivalry with Roy Shaw (in which he took over the mantle of The Guv'nor) is used to show how committed to the art of boxing he was, and there's a number of talking heads, including Lock, Stock co-stars, who describe what a tough but loveable man he was in his later years (the film was dedicated to him after he died a few weeks before its release).

In pugilists parlance, this documentary doesn't appear to be pulling many punches, but it chooses to slip past some topics it prefers to leave alone. There's a lot of talk about how things were done "in them days", including some stories of horrific violence inflicted by Lenny, but (perhaps not surprisingly) there's no one willing to say a bad word about him on camera.

In that respect The Guv'nor is an often one sided depiction of McLean, but this film (from the producers of Gascoigne) uses its impressive resource of archive footage to paint a portrait of a family man who, with incredible ferociousness, fought his demons his entire life to become a modern folk hero. There's a recently wrapped dramatisation of his life on the way coming from the same producers, but they've got a fight on their hands to cover Lenny's 'Raging Bull meets Legend' life story as well as this documentary does.

Verdict
4/5

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