Sweeney 2 | |
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Original British quad poster
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Directed by | Tom Clegg |
Produced by | Ted Childs |
Written by |
Ian Kennedy Martin Troy Kennedy Martin |
Starring |
John Thaw Dennis Waterman Denholm Elliott |
Music by | Tony Hatch |
Cinematography | Dusty Miller |
Edited by | Chris Burt |
Distributed by | EMI |
Release date
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Running time
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104 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Sweeney 2 is a British action movie made by Euston Films, released cinematically in the UK in 1978. A crime drama about the Flying Squad, a division of London's Metropolitan Police, it was made as a sequel to the successful 1977 film Sweeney!, which was a spin-off from the popular British television series The Sweeney (1974-78). Some of the action in the film is transferred from the usual London setting to Malta.
The series was based upon a fictionalised version of the Flying Squad. The term The Sweeney is derived from Cockney rhyming slang, originating in the expression Sweeney Todd: Flying Squad, and is a real term used by the London underworld to refer to the Squad, whose brief was to investigate armed robbery within the MPD (Metropolitan Police District), an area roughly corresponding to Greater London.
The leader of the Squad is the fictional Detective Inspector Jack Regan (John Thaw), and his second-in-command is Detective Sergeant Carter (Dennis Waterman).
A group of particularly violent armed robbers, who are committing bank and payroll robberies all over London, are strangely getting away from each robbery with just £60,000 - often leaving behind cash in excess of this sum. The robbers are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way: they even kill injured members of their own team in order to get clean away (to ensure they can't turn Queen's Evidence). As Regan himself puts it after the first raid in the film: "I've never seen so many dead people".
Film star Denholm Elliott plays a bent senior officer, Detective Chief Superintendent Jupp, asked to resign over allegations of corruption, who just before leaving his post instructs his subordinate to take down the gang. But, armed with gold-plated Purdey shotguns, they evade the Flying Squad for quite some time, leaving a trail which leads Jack Regan all the way to Malta and back, before he finds encouragement from Jupp, who meanwhile has been sent down for corruption because Jack wouldn't testify in court for him.