Plot/Storyline

OPENING PLOT

The film is set in the 1980s in England. There are 5 characters that are in a gang, lead by Joey Bruce. They have been to a club the night before and trashed it. The next morning the gangsters arrive at the club and the leader of the gang, Joey, demands to the bouncer to speak to the manager. The bouncer had been beaten up the night before and the camera show his bruises. It shows the room with all the turned over chairs, tables and smashed glasses over the floor. Joey demands the manager to put his men on the door; he does this through black mailing. He says that his gang will wreck the club every night until his men are put on the door. Joey wants his men on the door so they can drug deal at his club and the manager hesitantly agrees. The gangsters then walk out the club and they are shown walking down the street with confidence and intimidating facial expressions. The scene ends with a shot of the manager calling a hit man to take out the gangsters which sets the plot of the overall film.

OVERALL FILM PLOT

The overall plot of this film revolves around the story of Joey Bruce, a successful crime leader of his own gang in the UK. He is now running in his current affairs by drug dealing in order to earn more money for him and his friends. His notoriety amongst the local clubs is getting higher as the days go by. Joey decides to smash up a local club called ‘The Water Lane’ to intimidate the manager to the point where he allows him to put his own men on the door to deal to customers; expanding their business to a higher level. The manager obliges quite unwillingly but then decides to call a hit man on them to try and rid the town of their disturbances for good.

Joey’s gang starts dealing the night after the agreement and already the manager of the club is doing his best to identify all of them and to receive background information just to aid the hit man. He offers one of the men a drink and treats him very hospitably in the attempt to try and make tell the manager a bit about himself. By the end of the night, the manager calls the hit man again informing him of the two men’s names and their appearance, habits etc.

In the next scene, Joey is confronted by the police as he has been anonymously reported to have been threatening a local shop owner. He is taken into the police station where he is interrogated vaguely concerning his income and his day-to-day habits but Joey refuses to share anything. He ends the scene stating that the police have no hard proof against him or any of his friends for committing any criminal activities. This scene highlights Joey’s bulletproof personality and his high intelligence when it comes to crime and the law. We see him returning home to find a letter addressed ‘Mr Bruce’ that has been anonymously delivered and inside there is nothing but a note that says ‘Nice to meet you.’ Joey is confused of who it’s from but tares into two and doesn’t think twice about it.

The next morning Joey comes to meet the two men that he had at the club the previous night. They confess to him that they hadn’t sold a huge amount of their stock of drugs and Joey demands for the reason. In a cowardly fashion, one of them admits to him (George) that he was spending most of the evening talking to the manager. Joey is furious and threatens to kill him and his whole family if it happens again. They go their separate ways and then we see Joey making a phone call. We do not reveal who to but Joey says the line ‘Meet me in 15 minutes, the usual place.’ Then the scene draws to a close as we see Joey walking off in a curdled rage.

The next scene is set in the police station with the two police officers that interrogated Joey in the previous scene (Detective Sterling and Detective Pollitt). Sterling calls Pollitt over to his computer as he has found CCTV footage of Joey and his gang smashing open the club doors of The Water Lane. Pollitt credits Sterling for his find and then they embark on the task to find more evidence on him to bring him in for a charge.

The manager of The Water Lane is now seen locking up the club the next day where he is unexpectedly confronted by his hired hit man. He criticises the manager’s risk of being friendly to Bruce’s men and threatens to kill him as well if the police suspect him in any murders that he is planning to commit. The manager vulnerably agrees to never share information about him to anyone and the hit man walks off without saying another word.

The next morning Joey finds a second anonymous note on his doorstep which this time says ‘Turn on the news.’ Joey furiously shuts the front door and then goes to his living room to switch on the television. To his astoundment, on the death of two men. Both are members of Joey’s gang, Lucas and Martin, who were shot dead the night before. Joey immediately guesses that it was murder and leaves the house to confront the manager of The Water Lane. As he leaves, we see a car follow him slowly as he drives off in a storm.

Joey bursts through the club doors, even though its shut. He gets out his gun and shouts for the manager. The manager walks out of the dark in the corner of the room. Joey points the gun at him in fury demanding to know what happened to his men. The manager goes down to his knees but he is still smiling. Joey hits him with his gun and demands to know why he’s smiling. Joey hears a voice behind him and turns his head slightly to see the hit man whilst still pointing the gun at the manager. The hit man utters the line ‘You’ve been outplayed, Joey.’ He shoots him right in the chest and Joey looks down in shock before collapsing to the floor.

Suddenly, a man appears behind the hit man and tells him to get down on the ground. The manager attempts to run away but as he gets up and turns to the back entrance another man with a gun appears from the back and tells him to freeze. It was the police. Joey had been working with them all along. He had an arrangement with a few friends of the force that were watching over him. As long as he gave them a percentage of his total earnings, they were in on the deal with Joey. However, Joey was bleeding out slowly and they couldn’t escort him to a hospital as he would have been charged for all his wrongdoings. As the two men go over to him, the hit man tries to escape but one of them shoots him in the back and he goes down to the floor. The other man knocks out the manager just in case. More police then arrive at the scene and the camera shows Pollitt running towards the club in the hope to bring in Bruce. Unfortunately for him, Joey was bleeding out and his heart had stopped. He was breathing no longer. The last shot of the film is a tracking out shot from bird’s eye view on Joey lying on the floor and it displays the chaos with all the police arriving on scene until the screen fades slowly out to the credits.

END OF FILM