‘It isn’t glamorous. Far from it’: The story behind cult films spawned by notorious triple gangland murder
It became known as the Essex Boys murders, one of the UK’s most notorious gangland killings. On a snowy December morning in 1995, the bodies of three drug dealers were discovered inside a Range Rover parked up on an isolated, snow-covered farm track in the quiet village of Rettendon.
The car’s occupants, Patrick Tate, Tony Tucker and Craig Rolfe, had all been shot dead in a triple murder that quickly became headline news.
More than 25 years later, there have been numerous aggrandising dramatisations, true crime books and documentaries about the massacre, or inspired by the backstories of those who died or their associates. Many may argue more than is necessary, but the audience is there.
The real Bernard O’Mahoney (left), pictured with Jones on set, was a bouncer who knew Tony Tucker, one of the men killed in the triple murder
The biggest franchise fuelled by the events in Rettendon is Rise Of The Footsoldier, which started in 2007 and is now on film number five: Rise Of The Footsoldier Origins. This time round, the film loosely tells Tucker’s origin story, with ultimate hardman Vinnie Jones joining the cast to star as reformed bouncer-turned-author (and former star of Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men) Bernard O’Mahoney, the man behind more than one of those books on the subject.
Drugs, violence, guns, hyper-cockney accents and more four-letter words than Adele and Dave Grohl’s Glastonbury sets combined, the films are typical blokey British gangster fare.
However, O’Mahoney, who says he has never previously watched further than the first film because of the way it glamourised the lifestyle, says the rose-tinted lens has been removed to some extent for the newest offering.
“I’ve always sort of been politely anti them,” he says. “In previous films – and I’m not just talking about Rise of the Footsoldier films, I’m talking about that sort of genre – the bad guys nearly always win, and their lifestyle is portrayed as very glamorous, with all these girls and cars. That’s portraying a success story; they’re usually killed in the end but they have a great life along the way.”
In reality, that period of his own life was “a horrible time where everyone was out for themselves”, O’Mahoney says, and the “drugs world is more like Trainspotting – seedy and dark and no one’s got any money”. But it’s usually “people who have never lived in that environment” producing and directing the films, depicting their idea of the lifestyle.
Origins, which has a new director, Nick Nevern, is different, he says. It “throws a darker cloud” over the story.
“The reason I really like what Nick has done with this film is… they do have a bit of a glamorous life at the beginning, but then the drugs kick in and it shows their rapid decline and [how] they abandon their morals, abandon each other, and loyalty goes out the window, and that, I think, hasn’t been shown in these films previously. And that is exactly what happened.”
Jones has joined the franchise for the first time to play O’Mahoney
O’Mahoney was on set for the filming of several scenes, but hasn’t seen the film in full yet. So while he’s got a point, there is still an element of sheen, and the audience is clearly supposed to root for the characters and their gruesome antics. Still, number five does show a darker side and will almost certainly be less “fun” than number four, Rise Of The Footsoldier: Marbella, which saw the gang on their jollies in Spain.
While the 61-year-old said no to helping with research for the film at first, he says Jones’ casting won him round. “I thought this is their chance of revenge, they’re going to get Barry out of EastEnders or something…” He laughs. “There are similarities between us in looks. But they come back and said Vinnie Jones. I thought, well, at my age, I’m not going to say no to that.”
Jones, O’Mahoney says, didn’t need much advice on how to play him. “How can I put this politely? I think he was a bit of a lad in his day so I think he knows how things work. I don’t think he needed to learn a lot, I think he’s fairly streetwise himself.”
Craig Fairbrass, who has played Patrick Tate throughout the franchise, had moved into more perhaps critically acclaimed territory with recent films Muscle and Villain, and the upcoming Ire, when he got the call about returning for number five. He is refreshingly honest about the Footsoldier films – “they’re not the nicest, they’re very violent, but fans love them” – and about his role.
Fairbrass says fans sometimes think he is like his character in the films
“I’ve never kidded myself as an actor. I’m from London, I’m a certain size and physicality. It’s hard enough to get a job as an actor doing anything and I’ve always said there’s one thing worse than being typecast, that’s not cast.” He originally jumped at the chance to appear in the first film, he says, because he read the script and the “Pat Tate character jumped off the page – a big, horrible, powerful guy who takes liberties”.
But why are people so fascinated by characters like that, and the stories surrounding these murders in particular? Fairbrass says he has asked himself the question many times over the years of playing Tate. “This is not America, it’s England, so for three people to be gunned down at close range, murdered, in Essex in the middle of nowhere, there was a fascination with it straight away, this sort of mystery of who was it, who did this, how did it happen?
“I remember someone saying to me early on, ‘if they ever made a film, you’d make a perfect Pat Tate’. Then, like, 10 years later, I’m in the middle of a forest, soaking wet, drinking brandy, it’s freezing and snowing for real, and we’re doing the murder scene.”
Some fans of the films believe he must be like his character, Fairbrass says, and he has to tell them the reality is “very different”. You’re more likely to see the actor walking his little malshi dog than throwing punches.
“I just think there’s a massive, huge fascination from everybody with anything to do with murder and crime, especially when it’s on your own doorstep,” he says. “And because [the triple murder] was so horrific and you don’t get that every day… at the end of the day, they were gangsters, they weren’t the nicest of people.”
Jones has joined the franchise for the first time to play O’Mahoney
O’Mahoney can vouch for this, himself included at the time. The film portrays him as the level-headed one, who could see when things were turning ugly.
If there’s one thing he wants viewers to know, he says, it’s “don’t do this at home” and that selling drugs “absolutely destroys families”. He worries gang violence is “getting worse and worse”, particularly in London, with “kids killing other kids, you see in the papers, and that all comes from the glamourisation of it all, and it’s not good”.
He’s not proud of his past and says he’s written the books he has to try and show the grim realities, rather than glamourise it.
“I’m 61 now and when I look back at the things we were involved in… there’s a lot of people in Essex who get up and look in the mirror every day and think of me for all the wrong reasons. People have been, you know, scarred or injured.
“Looking back, the things we did and were involved with, it’s embarrassing. You know, how could you even think of doing [those things] to somebody? Most of it was gratuitous. And it got horrible.
“I’m certainly not proud of it, definitely not. Which is why I like what Nick’s done with this film. He’s put that side in, you know, it isn’t glamorous. Far from it.”
Rise Of The Footsoldier Origins is out in cinemas from 3 September
Hip hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs has lost a bid to delay his upcoming sex-trafficking trial by two months.
US district judge Arun Subramanian said the 55-year-old rapper made his request too close to his trial, which is due to start next month.
Jury selection is currently scheduled for 5 May with opening statements set to be heard seven days later.
Combs has pleaded not guilty to five criminal counts including racketeering and sex trafficking.
Prosecutors with the Manhattan US attorney’s office accuse Combs of using his business empire to sexually abuse women between 2004 and 2024.
Combs’s lawyers say the sexual activity described by prosecutors was consensual.
In a court filing on Wednesday, Combs’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo asked Mr Subramanian to delay the trial because he needed more time to prepare his defence to two new charges which were brought on 4 April.
The charges were of sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Mr Agnifilo also said his team needs extra time to review emails it wants an alleged victim to turn over.
The new allegations brought the total number of criminal charges against the rap mogul to five – following the three original counts, which also included racketeering conspiracy, filed in September.
Federal prosecutors were opposed to any delay, writing in a Thursday court filing that the additional charges brought
earlier this month did not amount to substantially new conduct.
They also said Combs was not entitled to the alleged victim’s communications.
Read more: Everything you need to know about the Sean Combs trial
A sketch of Combs during one of his court appearances. Pic: Reuters
Meanwhile, Mr Subramanian is weighing other evidentiary issues, such as whether to allow alleged victims to testify under pseudonyms.
Also known during his career as Puff Daddy and P Diddy, Combs founded Bad Boy Records and is credited with helping turn rappers and R&B singers such as Notorious B.I.G, Mary J. Blige, Faith Evans and Usher into stars in the 1990s and 2000s.
But prosecutors have said his success concealed a dark side.
They say his alleged abuse included having women take part in recorded sexual performances called “freak-offs” with male sex workers, who were sometimes transported across state lines.
Combs has been in jail in Brooklyn since September, having been denied bail.
He also faces dozens of civil lawsuits by women and men who have accused him of sexual abuse.
Combs has strenuously denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Entertainment
Warfare’s Alex Garland: ‘Being anti-war is not the same as saying it should never happen’
Alex Garland says while it’s “the most obvious statement about life on this planet” that the world would be a better place without war, it “doesn’t mean it should never happen”, and there are “circumstances in which war is required”.
The Oscar-nominated screenwriter and director told Sky News: “I don’t think it is possible to make a statement about what war is really like without it being implicitly anti-war, inasmuch as it would be better if this thing did not happen.
“But that’s not the same as saying it should never happen. There are circumstances in which war is required.”
(L-R) Co-writers and co-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza. Pic: A24
His latest film, Warfare, embeds the audience within a platoon of American Navy SEALs on an Iraqi surveillance mission gone wrong, telling the story solely through the memories of war veterans from a real 2006 mission in Ramadi, Iraq.
Garland says the film is “anti-war in as much as it is better if war does not happen,” adding, “and that is about the most obvious statement about life on this planet that one could make.”
Comparing it to ongoing geopolitical conflict across the world, Garland goes on: “It would be better if Gaza had not been flattened. It would be better if Ukraine was not invaded. It would it better if all people’s problems could be solved via dialogue and not threat or violence…
“To be anti-war to me is a rational position, and most veterans I’ve met are anti-war.”
The screenwriter behind hits including Ex Machina, 28 Days Later and The Beach says this film is “an attempt to recreate something as faithfully and accurately as we could”.
The film opens to Swedish dance hit Call On Me. Pic: A24
‘War veterans feel invisible and forgotten’
Almost entirely based on first-person accounts, the 15-rated film opens with soldiers singing along to the video of Swedish dance hit Call On Me – complete with gyrating women in thong leotards.
It’s the only music in the film. The remaining score is made up of explosions, sniper fire and screams of pain.
Garland co-wrote and co-directed the film alongside Hollywood stuntman and gunfight coordinator Ray Mendoza, whom Garland met on his last film, Civil War.
Mendoza, a communications officer on the fateful mission portrayed in the film, says despite the traumatic content, the experience of making the film was “therapeutic”.
Mendoza told Sky News: “It actually mended a lot of relationships… There were some guys I hadn’t spoken to in a very long time. And this allowed us to bury the hatchet, so to speak, on some issues from that day.”
Turning to Hollywood after serving in the Navy for 16 years, Mendoza says past war film he’d seen – even the good ones – were “a little off” because they “don’t get the culture right”.
Mendoza admits: “You feel like no one cares because they didn’t get it right. You feel invisible. You feel forgotten.”
With screenings of Warfare shown to around 1,000 veterans ahead of general release, Mendoza says: “They finally feel heard. They finally feel like somebody got it right.”
As to whether it could be triggering for some veterans, Mendoza says decisively not: “It’s not triggering. I would say it’s the opposite, for a veteran at least.”
Read more from Sky News:
How attack on aid workers unfolded
The gang war engulfing Scottish cities
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai plays communications officer Ray. Pic: A24
‘I’m an actor – I love my hair’
A tense and raw 90-minute story told in real time, the film’s ensemble cast is made up of young buzzy actors, dubbed “all of the internet’s boyfriends” when the casting was first announced.
Mirroring the Navy SEALs they were portraying, the cast initially bonded through a three-week bootcamp ahead of filming, before living together for the 25-day shoot.
Black Mirror’s Will Poulter, who plays Eric, the officer in charge of the operation, says the film’s extended takes and 360-degree sets demanded a special kind of focus.
Poulter said: “It required everyone to practise something that is fundamental to Navy SEAL mentality – you’re a teammate before you’re an individual.
“When a camera’s roaming around like that and could capture anyone at kind of any moment, it requires that everyone to be ‘on’ at all times and for the sake of each other.
“It becomes less about making sure that you’re performing when the camera lands on you, but as much about this idea that you are performing for the sake of the actor opposite you when the camera’s on them.”
Another of the film’s stars, Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, plays Mendoza and is the heart of the film.
Woon-A-Tai says the cast drew on tactics used by real soldiers to help with the intense filming schedule: “Laughter is medicine… A lot of times these are long takes, long hours, back-to-back days, so uplifting our spirit was definitely a big part of it.”
He also joked that shaving each other’s heads in a bonding ritual the night before the first day of filming was a daunting task.
“As actors, we love our hair. I mean, I speak personally, I love my hair. You know, I had really long hair. So yeah, it definitely takes a lot of trust. And you know, it wasn’t even at all, but you know it was still fun to do.”
Warfare is in cinemas now.
Birmingham band UB40 say the city’s striking bin workers and their union should “keep fighting” in their dispute over pay.
It comes as the government and the council urged them to accept a “fair and reasonable offer”.
“We’re fully on their side,” drummer Jimmy Brown told Sky News. “I think they shouldn’t give up, they should still be fighting.
“Working people shouldn’t have to take a reduction in their incomes, which is what we’re talking about here.
“We’re talking about people being paid less and it seems to me with prices going up, heating, buying food, inflation and rents going up then people need a decent wage to have a half decent life… keep going boys!”
Members of the Unite union in Birmingham earlier this month. Pic: PA
Workers joined picket lines again on Thursday, with some fearing they could be up to £600 a month worse off if they accept the terms.
“We have total utter support for the bin men and all trade unions,” said guitarist Robin Campbell.
“The other side is always going to say they’ve made a reasonable offer – the point is they’re the ones who’ve messed up, they’re the ones who’ve gone bankrupt, they’re the ones now trying to reduce the bin men’s wages.”
👉 Listen to Sky News Daily on your podcast app 👈
Lead singer Matt Doyle told Sky News: “It’s a shame that what we’re seeing is all the images of rats and rubbish building up, that is going to happen inevitably, but we’ve just got to keep fighting through that.”
About 22,000 tonnes of rubbish accumulated on the city’s streets after a major incident was declared last month by Birmingham City Council.
Rubbish has blighted the city’s streets for weeks . Pic: PA
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Bin situation ‘pains me’ – council boss
On a visit to the city, local government minister Jim McMahon said the union and local authority should continue to meet in “good faith” and the government felt there was a deal that could be “marshalled around”.
He paid tribute to the “hundreds of workers” who have worked “around the clock” to clear the rubbish.
Read more:
Bin workers urged to accept ‘fair’ offer
Military planners help with bin crisis
“As we stand here today, 85% of that accumulated waste has been cleared and the council have a plan in place now to make sure it doesn’t accumulate going forward,” said Mr McMahon.
Sky News understands talks are not set to resume until next week.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway