Hmm. Like American Gangster and 3:10 to Yuma before it this year, I can’t help feeling disappointed here. From the director of Crash, A History of Violence, the writer of Dirty Pretty Things, and the exuberent praise of Mark Kermode, I’ve gotta say I really expected more from this. A second viewing might prove me wrong, but I haven’t even got round to a second viewing of “History” and I still know that movie was better – most particular in the visuals department. London just looks drab here, and not in any kind of way that it’s pertinent to the plot. Just about everybody involved here has done better work, and even the already infamous steam room scene isn’t that impressive. At 90 minutes I’m bound to watch it again before Oscar time, particularly if it’s nominated for anything … though that would really surprise me.

This really fell for me into the same place as 3:10 to Yuma. Combine 3:10 with Zodiac, in fact, and you get almost exactly how this one made me feel. It’s perfectly well put together, but it’s procedural to the point of distraction and completely, unnecessarily, overlong.

Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe are mostly fine, but at times they allow the most annoying aspects of their respective personas to slip in in the most annoying ways imaginable – and Crowe’s accent is appalling. They’re both really phoning it in in my opinion compared with past glories.

It has some effective jolts, but honestly, the list of movies I’d recommend over this is endless. But to continue the connection to my Yuma review – I’m again left sorely longing for a Leone movie, Once Upon a Time in America, which covered everything a gangster movie needs to cover, and at nearly 4 hours isn’t remotely unnecessary. The similar story of Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables of course comes to mind too. Failing that, Blow comes to mind. And if you just want another 2007 movie that did the 70s period thing as if not more flawlessly, like I say, look no further than the meticulous David Fincher’s Zodiac ... which I want to see a second time even more after this.