We Still Steal the Old Way: The Sequel Nobody Needed

We Still Steal the Old Way (2017)
Directed by: Sacha Bennett
Written by: Sacha Bennett, Simon Cluett
Starring: Ian Ogilvie, Billy Murray, Patrick Bergin, Vas Blackwood
Release Date: 2017
Available on: Amazon Prime Video

For reasons I prefer not to discuss, I am still compelled to watch films late at night under the supervision of my grandmother. It is possible she is attempting to break my spirit by subjecting me to one dreary crime drama after another. Alternatively, this might just be what the old actually like. Either way, it is a cruel and unusual fate, especially when I could be watching a film where vengeful schoolgirls talking Korean tear their oppressors to shreds with surgical scalpels.

We Still Kill People the Old Way was a passable slice of geriatric gangster nostalgia for which nobody really needed a sequel. And yet, for reasons best known to the producers’ accountants, here we are with We Still Steal the Old Way—a film that takes the mild charm of its predecessor, then crushes it under the weight of a tired script. The result is an anaemic rehash that is as joyless as it is pointless.

The premise, if one can call it that, sees our ageing East End criminals caught mid-robbery and sent to prison. There, they must contend with a vengeful enemy, corrupt guards, and the realisation that none of them should have signed on for this script. The plot is riddled with holes, none of which are interesting enough to discuss at length. Billy Murray’s character, in a move that the film treats as cunning rather than grotesque, sodomises someone with a broom handle in order to move prison and get his revenge for something I was too bored to follow. A subplot involving an incriminating interview tape is then introduced and then promptly ignored—hardly surprising, since, even in modern England, you are not likely to be released on appeal for one violent crime when you are on remand for another. Meanwhile, the gentleman thief George Briggs is banged up for reasons that are never properly explained; so too the fact that his family remains rich and in good standing with persons of quality.

It is, in short, a mess. Whatever nostalgic appeal the first film had is lost in a dreary cycle of prison clichés and subpar action.

Ian Ogilvie does his best with the material, exuding the same old-school charm that made him a joy to watch in the first film. But even he seems bored, as if realising midway through that he should have stayed home. Billy Murray delivers his lines with the enthusiasm of a man forced to read out the terms and conditions of a broadband contract. He is still convincing as a ruthless gangster, but the script gives him nothing worth working with.

Tanya Franks, at least, turns in a solid performance as the prison governor, exuding the bland, self-serving incompetence of a modern bureaucrat. If I were coming yet out of terminal boredom, I might fit in a digression on New Labourish women promoted far beyond their meagre talents. But I won’t.

The action sequences are lacklustre, the dialogue leaden. The film’s attempts at tension fall flat. The prison setting, instead of adding an edge, just makes the whole thing feel more confined—both physically and creatively.

We Still Steal the Old Way is not just unnecessary—it is actively tedious. It is the cinematic equivalent of a washed-up musician releasing an album of uninspired covers, hoping to wring a few more quid out of his dwindling fanbase. If you enjoyed the first film, preserve that memory and avoid this sequel at all costs. If you didn’t enjoy the first film, then watching this one is as advisable as drinking from a puddle in a Wetherspoons toilet.