Michael Kinsey and James Burrows in Three Day Millionaire. Photo: Signature Entertainment

THREE DAY MILLIONAIRE
Directed by Jack Spring
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆

THE “little bit wah, a little bit weh” school of British film is alive and kicking in this mixed-up comedy that marries an Ealing Studios sensibility with a 1990s geezer-flick, while stirring in a bit of Loach-like political comment.

Curly (James Burrows) is the handsome narrator, the trawlerman who has generations of brine flowing through his veins. We join him as he steps ashore a “Three Day Millionaire” – meaning his pockets are awash with wages and there is a binge to be had.

His mates Codge (Michael Kinsey), and Budgie (Sam Glen), join him and as the partying gets under way, Curly is led to believe by his boss Mr Bar (Colm Meaney) that a new era awaits as a new fleet is being planned.

Not so: instead, Mr Bar has signed a deal to close the port and sell the land to a yuppie housing development.

But there could be a way out: the firm’s safe has an unusually large amount of bank notes stashed inside it – and Curly and friends, faced with zero hour contracts for a multi-national chain, decide lifting the cash is an altogether more attractive prospect.

The wham-bam nature of this film feels like it’s been lifted from the pages of a Loaded magazine, circa 1995. It’s a bit like a mash-up of Danny Boyle and Guy Ritchie.

Has director Jack Spring done this on purpose? He uses the same tricks to a degree that it feels tongue in cheek.

Who really does the talk to camera in mangled slang as they bowl through a decayed landscape? Who introduces characters with nicknames stamped on screen in chunky typography? Then add a confusing clash of accents: instead of north-eastern, Grimsby feels like a melting pot of UK wide boys.

But these low-lying bloopers do not detract from some charm, comedy and the polemic at its heart. It is simplistic, but nevertheless true.

The trawlermen are the plucky, up-standing grafters versus the Thatcherites who produce nothing of real value and make their money by paying low wages and enforcing poor conditions.

It’s a bleak reading of Britain’s decline and 40 years of missed opportunities that have failed to give the trawlermen a new sense of worth through industry and employment. No wonder blagging a safe full of cash from those who have been stealing from you for decades seems morally justifiable.