Going Off Big Time

Neil Fitzmaurice - Mark Clayton
Dominic Carter - Ozzi Shepherd
Sarah Alexander - Stacey Bannerman
Bernard Hill - Murray
Stan Boardman - Arthur McCann
Peter Kay - Flipper

Yet another cash-in on the success of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels scripted by lead actor Neil Fitzmaurice, but this film differs in being more a restrained story than a stylized tale of drugs and guns. Sadly, Going Off Big Time isn't inventive enough to stand out as exceptional contemporary gangster drama but it does avoid the pitfalls of Circus and Essex Boys.

Told in flashback from the flat of his attractive solicitor Stacey (Sarah Alexander), Mark Clayton (Neil Fitzmaurice) is in the wrong place at the wrong time and finds himself doing four years for assaulting a police officer. He adjusts to prison life and begins to stand up for himself against the system that failed him. He makes new friends in prison – charismatic old lag Murray (Bernard Hill) and young hothead Ozzi (Dominic Carter). When they’re released, after a chance meeting Mark and Ozzi join forces to form a gang and plan to take over control of Liverpool’s criminal underworld. They are keen but desperate. Any scam will do - even dealing drugs from an ice cream van. Mark is smart and the new gang is powerful and successful. But Ozzi is a loose cannon - violent, crazy and uncontrollable - a time bomb about to explode.