Writer: Ben Shillito
Director: Steven Lawson
Craig Fairbrass, Danny Dyer, Jason Flemyng. If those names mean anything to you then you’ve already got a good idea of what Dead Cert is like. In case you’re in any doubt, the film starts with a bare knuckle fist fight.
Dead Cert has Freddy (Fairbrass) as the owner of a new pole dance nightclub in London. Eddie (Dexter Fletcher) introduces them to a group of ‘Romanian’ businessmen who want the club. They get it, but Freddy decides he wants it back… at which point he discovers that the ‘Romanians’ are vampires. The rest of the film is a fight between the two groups.
The acting is actually better than expected: in particular Flemyng and Fletcher are very good. Then, rather bizarrely, we have Steven Berkoff of all people as the vampire hunter; he’s basically there to hand out infodumps, it’s not one of his greatest roles.
Which is really the problem with Dead Cert: the story. There isn’t much of one. The first half is basically violent macho posturing, the rest is an even more violent gang fight with Berkoff reminding us that one gang are actually vampires. It finally reaches a conclusion which was set up with appropriate lack of subtlety near the beginning.
For what it is, Dead Cert isn’t a terrible film – you just need to know what to expect. This isn’t a vampire film with gangsters, it’s a gangster film with vampires. If that’s what you’re looking for then you might enjoy it.
Personally I found it rather boring.