The Business (2005 film)

The Business is a 2005 British crime film written and directed by Nick Love, starring Danny Dyer as Frankie, a young South Londoner who flees to the Costa del Sol and rises within an expatriate gang of drug smugglers in the 1980s.¹ It was Love's third feature and his third collaboration with Dyer, following Goodbye Charlie Bright and The Football Factory.²

Production

Love and the production company Vertigo Films conceived the picture as the follow-up to the football-hooligan film The Football Factory, with producer James Richardson calling it "a sun burnt version of a classic American movie".¹³ Principal photography ran from 20 September to 14 November 2004, with locations in Spain and the UK.⁵ The crew included the editor Stuart Gazzard, the director of photography Damian Bromley, and the composer Ivor Guest; Rupert Preston served as producer.^{3 • 5}

Why Spain. Love said the film became a gangster film because he wanted to set it outside England for the look: rather than a gray inner-city 1980s film, he wanted something flash and over the top, and the Costa del Sol in the 1980s had a large community of gangsters living well there. He described the film's aim as showing "the rise and fall of Thatcherism" in a place full of flash people with bundles of cash.⁶ The Irish Times reviewer Michael Dwyer noted that in that decade southern Spain was such a popular haven for British gangsters that it was nicknamed the Costa del Crime.¹¹

Dyer said the shoot was deliberately austere despite the sun-soaked locations: the cast stayed in a small village over an hour from Marbella, chosen by Love because its untouched port could pass for Puerto Banus in the 1980s, and where nobody spoke English.²

Style and soundtrack

Critics placed the film in a recognizable lineage. Philip French in The Observer wrote that it was modeled on Brian De Palma's Scarface and Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas while remaining very British in its humor and its anti-heroes' obsession with 1980s sports-gear fashion.¹ Dwyer heard echoes of Goodfellas in the narrative template and of Sexy Beast in the Costa del Sol setting.¹¹ Time Out called it "a Day-Glo, budget version of De Palma's 'Scarface'", propped up by ample voiceover, back-to-back 1980s music, and yards of casual clobber from Fila and Sergio Tacchini.⁷

The soundtrack. The film opens with Duran Duran's "Planet Earth" and its jukebox of 1980s pop spans Blondie, David Bowie, OMD, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Roxy Music, the Buggles, and A Flock of Seagulls.¹¹ Love said the music was drawn from different years of the decade for a practical reason: the whole film was made for under £2 million, and some 1980s bands wanted £250,000 to clear one song. With EMI on board, acts such as Frankie and Duran Duran licensed their songs for a fraction of their worth.⁶

Costume. Love sourced the period sportswear from eBay and shops across the globe, buying gear before he wrote the script; Sergio helped with some of its old stock, while Fila could not help because a fire had destroyed its museum warehouse in Italy.⁶ He described Charlie's costume arc, from an open-neck shirt at the start to an "electric pink" adidas tracksuit at the end, as a metaphor for the character's decline.⁶

Reception

The film divided critics. French judged that it fulfilled the promise of Love's two earlier pictures, calling it neatly plotted with a suitably garish look, and observing that it simultaneously glamorizes crime and exposes the seductive glamour of the criminal life.¹ His Guardian colleague Peter Bradshaw gave it one star out of five, calling it "one more cliched, naive and dubiously celebratory parade of lairy geezers and Britfilm gangsters".¹² On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 50% Tomatometer from 8 reviews against an 84% Popcornmeter audience score; Matthew Turner of ViewLondon gave it 4/5 and praised Dyer's "genuinely sympathetic performance", while Joe Utichi of FilmFocus gave it 2/5.⁸ On IMDb it holds a 6.6/10 rating from about 16,000 users.⁹

Dyer, promoting the film, said it was less violent than The Football Factory because the filmmakers wanted to reach a wider audience, and that his Frankie was kept as an outsider for most of the film so the audience could see events through his eyes; he also noted that most of his lines were carried by the narration rather than dialogue.² The film received a 2005 British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Achievement in Production.¹⁰

References

1. Philip French, review of The Business, The Observer via The Guardian (3 September 2005)
2. Doing the business, The Irish Times (3 September 2005)
3. The Business, British Council UK Films Database
4. The Business, JustWatch
5. The Business, Crew United
6. Exclusive Nick Love 'The Business' interview from 2005, 80s Casuals
7. The Business, Time Out film review
8. The Business, Rotten Tomatoes
9. The Business (2005), IMDb ratings
10. The Business, TV Guide
11. Michael Dwyer, The pain in Spain, The Irish Times (2 September 2005)
12. The Business, The Guardian film page
13. Love's Business completes casting, Screen Daily (10 September 2004)

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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