This Essex- and Spain-set, semi-fact-based crime thriller is part of a three-part mini-franchise, which started out as an adaptation of football hooligan/underworld figure Carlton Leach’s autobiography, although Leach isn’t relevant here. Instead, this focuses squarely on the unpleasant gang of drug dealers and thugs led by the eponymous Pat Tate (Craig Fairbrass, who’s been in all three films) who rose to prominence in the late 80s-early 90s and ended up (spoiler alert) very directly involved in the infamous Rettendon Range Rover murders of 1995.
Borrowing liberally to the point of larceny from the Goodfellas’ gangster-flick playbook – right down to the freeze-frames, voiceover and abundant violence (but minus the wit or style) – this oddly monotonous narrative is derivative and tedious, unless you really like lots of macho twerps beating and cutting each other, endless shots of drugs being snorted and swallowed, and swearing, unimaginatively, with every other word.
That said, the nostalgia-inducing soundtrack of vintage house music is a bit of a kick, and it’s fun to see that decade handled as a period with its own distinctive style and lurid camera filter. Fairbrass isn’t half bad and has a grunting sort of charisma.
