'Relentless' (2020) – Steven Murphy.

After having greatly enjoyed independent film-maker Steven Murphy's sexually skewed, downbeat small-town melodrama 'My Saviour', I eagerly went into his gritty suburban pot-boiler 'Relentless', secretly hoping for a similarly strange, off-beat excursion into the bellicose Brit-gangster milieu, only to soon discover that, for reasons obscure, Murphy largely eschews the quixotic, auteurist weirdness of 'My Saviour' for a far more formulaic gunz n' dodgy geezerz 'Essex Boys' pastiche. Jake (Steven), an amiable quick-fisted lug is released from nick for crimes obscure, only to find himself inexorably embroiled in some increasingly volatile small-town chav warfare that will do little to endear him to his parole officer!. 

After the muscular thug with the big heart comes to the aid of Ava (Tiffany Ellen-Robinson), a chippy, red-headed brass with the proverbial gilded heart, these dramatically mismatched hearts form an uneasy, frequently febrile alliance as they frantically attempt to elude the ever encroaching menace of knife-wielding, Hyena-like Hoodies, reckless roid-headed hoodlums, gun-happy gangsters and some mountainous mush-mouthed mongle called 'The Beast'! Even with 'Relentless' concluding explosively in a seemingly arbitrary squib-happy gunfight I found myself a little underwhelmed by it all. The acting performances are pretty variable, with stolid, if unexciting work from Murphy, and the plainly engaged Ellen-Robinson is convincing as the pitifully insecure, hard-luck, happy-go-mucky harlot, but, unfortunately, it is all a trifle predictable, Murphy's generic dialogue is functional, rather than exceptional, the too-hectic fight scenes appeared rushed, but happily the noisome, thick-eared narrative is deliciously enlivened by actor/composer Maria Theresa Rodriguez's fine score. In conclusion, while I enjoyed the more incongruent episodes of 'Reckless' it lacked the inherent WTF quality of 'My Saviour'. To end on a more positive note, I genuinely dug the Father Ted joke!