Accountant tries to locate a gun in one of the less picturesque parts of London. He meets up with a drug addict who offers to help him out. Unfortunately for all concerned the gun he wants to sell is actually the property of a well tattooed and very crazed drug dealer. From that point things rapidly spiral out of control for all concerned and nothing goes right. Unremarkable drama feels at times as if it would be better suited for the stage where the rawness would over whelm the staginess of it all. Helping things along is the rapid discovery that nothing is as it seems and a good performance by Andy Serkis. (I really like Serkis but I'm rapidly coming to the opinion that he is either a one note actor, or he has to do something to get himself better roles since almost every one he's taken is a psycho.)

Sugarhouse is an uncomfortable watch, with painful, often ugly violence and dialogue that is more often than not shouted. It turns to become, mainly a two-man show with white middle-class, jacket-wearing Steven Mackintosh who ventures into ghetto-land somewhere in decaying urban London to buy back a gun used in a murder and black, crack-addict Ashley Walters.

Being far nearer in real life to Mackintosh than Walters (by a far margin!) it wouldn't be right for me, myself to say how realistic the dialogue is, or the scenarios. So, I'm not going to try and pretend to say things like it's 'hip' or 'savvy', but looks and sounds really not very nice.

Walters, plus his chums generally give Mackintosh a hard time, over how a privileged a life he has and much angst and verbal ricocheting carries on. When director Gary Love's camera swings back and forth to them, it's an odd duet experience, so chalk and cheese.

Andy Serkis has been accused of overacting in Sugarhouse and we certainly get our money's worth from his psychopathic drug-dealer character. We see him at the start, nude, stretching his muscles and revealing his many tattoos. More revealing than is necessary, some critics have said, but it gives us a very clear indication that here we have a shaven-head bully more akin the Hannibal Lecter than Peter Pan.

As such, as Hoodwink, he is the colour and propulsion in this film. It would be quite dreary without him and who's to say what is over-the-top? It's of a type of person that thankfully I don't know and hopefully never will. His Irish accent seems pretty good too.

The film certainly came under my radar and watching it on BBC2 now, I was surprised that it was made 5 years ago and I'd never heard of it or referred to.

Sugarhouse is the story of a middle class man trying to buy a firearm in the UK, and all the things that go wrong with that transaction, from the crackhead who is selling it to him, to the psychotic drug dealer who owns the gun, to the reasons he wants the gun in the first place.

This isn't a witty and convoluted Guy Ritchie gangster film, these characters are low-level criminals engaging in their day to day enterprises with the addition of a middle-class gun buyer throwing everything out of kilter.

Andy Serkis played the psychotic drug dealer with his usual flair, you could almost smell the rage he was putting off. The other actors did a fine job of representing their characters, production values were high, dialog was good.

This is an above average crime drama, with a lot of dialog and some action thrown in during the more intense moments. My American ear had some trouble with the accents, but in general it's easy to understand what's going on and why.