| Sweeney 2 | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Tom Clegg |
| Produced by | Ted Childs |
| Written by | Ian Kennedy Martin Troy Kennedy Martin |
| Starring | John Thaw Denis Waterman Denholm Elliot |
| Music by | Tony Hatch |
| Cinematography | Dusty Miller |
| Editing by | Chris Burt |
| Distributed by | EMI |
| Release date(s) | April 1978 |
| Running time | 104 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Sweeney 2 is a 1978 film that is a sequel to the 1977 film Sweeney! which was itself a spin-off from the popular British TV show The Sweeney. Some of the action was transferred from the usual London setting to Malta. Denholm Elliot appears as a corrupt ex-officer, who asks his former subordinates to take down a gang of armed bank robbers. Nigel Hawthorne appears as a bureaucratic superior officer, taking the role usually played by Garfield Morgan in the television episodes.
The plot is set on a group of bank robbers, who are both violent and successful, strangely getting away each time with an amount around the £60,000 mark, and often leaving behind cash in excess of this sum.
The robbers are willing to kill their own team, to get away. As Jack Regan himself puts it after the first raid in the film: "I've never seen so many dead people". Armed with gold-plated Purdey shotguns, they evaded Regan and the Flying Squad for quite some time, before Regan finds encouragement from his Detective Chief Superintendent who was sent down for corruption because Jack wouldn't testify in court for him.