It Was an Accident (2000, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Max Beesley, James Bolam, Thandie Newton, Nicola Stapleton, Neil Dudgeon) – Classic Movie Review 7313

It was a comedy? No, I didn’t think so!

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in director Metin Hüseyin‘s 2000 It Was an Accident as Nicky Burkett, who comes out of jail after four years and returns to Walthamstow, London, to find a slew of troubles, including a heap of debts that get him involved with old-time gangster Vernon Fitch (Bolam), whose money he accepts to perform a hit.

It Was an Accident is another dreadful British gangster comedy drama film that thinks it can outdo Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, but has not got any of Guy Ritchie’s skills. It is completely amateurish and offensive. People speak in some alien tongue only known as ‘filmspeak’ – never has the word ‘staunch’ been uttered so often in one movie – and do things they only do in very bad movies. It is like the worst of Fifties British B-movies overlaid with a whole load of extremely ugly violence and swearing. It Was an Accident comes out on the rancid level of Circus and Rancid Aluminium. What a great Razzie treble bill that would be! They would have to pay people to go to the cinema.

It also manages to make rising star Thandie Newton (as Noreen Hurlock) look unattractive and seem unable to act. She certainly cannot be a convincing East Ender.

The rotten screenplay is by Ol Parker, based on a novel by Jeremy Cameron. Happily, Parker has gone on to bigger and better things, including Now Is Good and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

Parker has been married to Newton since 11 July 1998 and they have three children.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7313

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