Plastic (2014)

I will confess that this one was an impulse watch on Netflix. Sometimes the odd gem pops up on Netflix that missed all the usual marketing hype. This isn’t one of them.

Here we have a bunch of college students, who are apt at acquiring credit cards through fair means or foul and then spending on them before the card is canceled. Sometimes a good cast can make a bad story good, but even here, we have a B-players simply turning up and reading their lines. You have enough faces here that you think, where have I seen him before?

Ed Speleers (from Downton Abbey),

Alfie Allen (from Game of Thrones),

Will Poulter (from We’re the Millers) and

Emma Rigby (from Hollyoaks) all providing the central gang members. There is no dynamics between them, nothing that would make you want to root for them.

Of course, inevitably they run a foul of the local gangster who tasks them for acquiring a huge haul of money in a very short space of time or be killed. They have a bright idea, of heading over to Miami in Florida (by the way the movie is set in London by in large). They look to suck dry the credit cards of the big whales that have been identified for their heavy spending.

That all goes wrong in the usual predictability that has you rolling your eyes so they turn their attention to acquire diamonds from a local deal, posing as a wealthy Arabian prince.

Graham McTavish, who I can only imagine was bored between Outlander seasons, plays the diamond merchant they con to coming over to London with the diamonds.

I mean the whole thing is just stupid on so many levels, the fact I am writing this much about it, only serves as a warning to others who may find themselves going down this path unaware of the sheer futility of it. For that reason, I am giving it my second only ever 0 out of 10 rating.