The story of an undesirable getting offed by a full load to the face surprised many solely because it was not an incident from Meghan Markle’s days as a yacht girl. Instead it was what happened when Essex villains Pat Tate, Tony Tucker & Craig Rolfe getting blasted to death by shot gun as they sat in a land rover parked up in a country lane that was recounted in the 2007’s ‘Rise of the Footsoldier’. Almost twenty years later that film has spawned a franchise that’s sees the release of a seventh film, Rise of the Footsoldier : Retribution.
With the first film having seen Pat Tate dead the franchise has, out of necessity, rewound to chapters in his earlier days using them as a leaping off point for the subsequent films. Retribution picks up from the 2023 film ‘Vengeance’ which saw Tate’s best friend Kenny (Josh Myers) brutally tortured and murdered. It’s that which gives Tate alarming flashbacks in his sleep. But knowing who would be responsible is the key to this and Tate travels to Ibiza on the ubiquitous roaring rampage of revenge in retribution for his friend’s murder.
Rise of the Footsoldier : Retribution….but on who?
Helping him along in the right direction is Sam (Jamie Foreman) and all might be straight forward enough for Tate if it was not for a rag tag army of mercenaries stealing guns and gold before fleet footing it also to Ibiza with the CIA in pursuit. Inevitably it’s not long before Tate and Sam’s path crosses the mercenaries led by Colonel Jack Sullivan (Tamer Hassan) with his slicked back bobbed haircut and mahogany tan looking like an Aztec god from Temu. The Colonel’s plans are enforced with brutal efficiency by sidekick Captain Sergio (Leo Gregory) with the sort of hair trigger temper normally reserved for a PTSD riddled Vietnam vet going through an acrimonious divorce. It’s all leading to an explosive showdown and Tate is stuck in the middle.
Producer Andrew Loveday co-writes with Nick Nevern once again who also directs and appears as criminal low life, Greener.. To greater or lesser extent the previous films require minimum knowledge of what’s gone on before and can be watched as standalones but Retribution is very much the second film in a two-parter that started with Vengeance and this is not the first time that the Footsoldier films have relocated from the mean streets of Essex to the Balearics. This new film is a far less of the swear fest have been and the grimy, gnarly violence of underworld criminality that the previous entries has unflinchingly depicted.
Brutal?
This latest film reaches far more into action territory than the previous films and builds to an all-out explosive finale where gun play is everything and borrows that moment from the fourth Rambo film which saw the super soldier on the back of a military jeep with a huge calibre machine gun laying waste to a platoon of Burmese soldiers although here it is mercenaries whose time at boot camp seems to have been spent polishing them.
Rise of the Footsoldier Retribution is a confident addition to one of the most popular and profitable British independent films and this is certain to continue the popularity of the franchise in what has become Craig Fairbrass’ signature role.
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We chat to Craig Fairbrass about the film….
Here’s the trailer….
