The Young Americans – 1993 | 100 mins | Crime, Thriller | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Danny Cannon’s debut feature is an early forerunner to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and the marked resurgence of gritty London gangster films during the 90s. A slick and atmospheric crime thriller aided by David Arnolds soundtrack, The Young Americans lacks any real character depth but the fine acting of veteran Keitel and a group of relative unknowns, particularly Craig Kelly, manages to carry the weak script.

John Harris (Harvey Keitel), is a hard-bitten Los Angeles drug enforcement officer seconded to London to advice a Scotland Yard taskforce dealing with a spate of drug-related murders undertaken by a gang of well-armed teenagers. Cheap drugs are flooding the city’s nightclubs, and there is an increasing prospect of gangland war between the American drug racketeers expanding into Europe and the traditional London underworld. After attending the funeral of a victim, Harris quickly homes in on the last person to see him alive, nightclub owner Jack Doyle (Keith Allen), who mixes with mysterious American Carl Frazer (Viggo Mortensen), a drug kingpin known to Harris who is enlisting teenage boys to carry out his dirty work.

Driven by an obsession to get his man, Harris and British police officer Edward Foster (Iain Glen) recruit teenage Chris O’Neil (Craig Kelly) to go undercover – a clubland barman eager for revenge after the murder of his father. Chris ingratiates himself to Frazer and is taken under the American’s wing as a possible new recruit, and despite nearly revealing that he’s wearing a wire manages to discover a forthcoming drug deal at the club. The police hatch a plan to raid the club just as the drug shipment arrives and arrest both Frazer and Doyle. Plans go awry when the entrapped bar manager discovers Chris is a stooge, and after being unexpectedly released from police custody, he rushes back to the club to tip-off everybody. Harris and his men quickly move in, but Frazer takes Chris’ girlfriend Rachael (Thandie Newton) hostage. At this moment, Callow (Terence Rigby), an old-fashioned East End gangster threatened by Frazer, arrives with a shotgun to kill his rival.