cult film freak: KEN HUTCHISON PLAYS THE ULTIMATE HEAVY FOR 'SWEENEY 2'

Title: SWEENEY 2 Shown: Ken Hutchison Year: 1978 Rates: ****1/2

Before the fourth and final season of the popular British crime television series THE SWEENEY, two theatrical films hit the big screens in succession, from 1977 to 1978...

The first called SWEENEY! centered more on John Thaw's Chief Inspector Regan in a kind of NORTH BY NORTHWEST where his young protege Sergeant Carter, played by Dennis Waterman, had such little screen-time at one point he chooses not to be seen with Regan's "wrong man" at all...

Ken Hutchison as Mr. Hill in SWEENEY 2 with wife Anna Gaël

Followed by the much more series-related SWEENEY 2, fully-charged back to Scotland Yard's Flying Squad basics... a cop/crime investigative-drama mixed with buddy action centered on a unique group of bank robbers...

All British-born criminals (and their ironically mundane wives and children) living large in Malta until they sporadically need just-enough dough to keep their communal lives rolling...

Guy Standeven in SWEENEY 2 with Ken Hutchison

Their leader is STRAW DOGS villain Ken Hutchison whose Mr. Hill has various golden sawed-off Purdeys, pointed at bank tellers or managers only half-shocked since the gang had previously threatened these same insiders about the impending assault-like blags...

But it's not all aggressive crime as the most fun's had with Regan and Carter providing SWEENEY 2 some lightweight comedy, just as they'd combine thrills and non-deliberate laughs on the series...

John Thaw and Dennis Waterman in the hotel scene from SWEENEY 2

One great sequence breaks from the pivotal story centering on Carter dis-mantling a bomb inside a plush hotel while Regan does his usual attempt at womanizing...

But the real suspense centers on those robbers getting more and more desperate and dangerous, and how our boys cut corners to use their experienced streetwise intellect to find out exactly who and where they are and might be next.