Pete Thompson's father dies and leaves him the whole business. However his friend and business accountant, Sean Deeny, reveals that the business is in major trouble with the taxman. To get past the problem Sean and Pete go into business with the Russian mafia. However Pete has other plans to get rich, while Sean just wants to have kids and have a quiet life.
In the past few years the spate of British gangster films has been very much one of copies of `Lock Stock' etc. Some of them manage to be different and clever enough to work, but many are poor copies that lack any style or substance. Unfortunately for my evening, Rancid Aluminium falls within the latter category. The plotting is very poor, it is rambling and has nothing resembling tension or gripping narrative. In essence it is a short film with all the scenes stretched out to longer than they can sustain. The end result is a loose mess of a plot that doesn't really hang together at all.
The film can't manage the style of Lock, Stock instead it feels forced, maybe this was the director's first film it certain feels like he is trying to impress someone with old ideas that are fresh to him. The script also fails to really bring any characters out, instead they are pretty much all flat clichés. Now, I know the same is true of those in Lock, Stock and Snatch, but at least these had some redemption by being funny and tongue in cheek at points. Here that is pretty much not the case with any of the characters. Ifans makes good effort but is hampered by the script, he is the best of a poor bunch. Fiennes is awful, no sooner had he got the perfect career springboard in `Shakespeare in Love' then he does this. His accent is awful and his overall performance is weak. Fitzgerald, Frost and Behr all just line up to be naked and have their sex scenes. It is slightly degrading to see the film be so unimaginative that it just has regular sex scenes to keep the audience interested. Berkoff and Allen are hammy and pretty pointless.
Overall this film has few if any redeeming qualities. Any it does have are because it copied it from other, better films. It is full of nonsense that the director mistook for style or modern wit. A real waste of time and effort.