Fakers

SYNOPSIS

There's something endearingly reminiscent of the 1960s about this small but watchable British crime caper. There's even a sprint through a London market in a Smart car; a sequence that, 40 years ago, would undoubtedly have featured a Mini. Matthew Rhys plays a small-time conman who's heavily in debt to London crime lord Art Malik. When Rhys stumbles across a lost sketch by an Italian master, he sees a way of wiping his slate clean - he commissions several copies and seeks to flog them to some of London's less scrupulous art dealers over the course of a single morning. The plot hinges on the innate greed of the dealers, and its tension resides in Rhys's frantic bid to sell them all before one of the experts can authenticate the sketch. This is well cast, decently made and has some charm, but it lacks big-screen appeal and might just as well be viewed on DVD as at the cinema.