Growing up in Southend-on-Sea in Essex, I am old enough to remember the uneasy feeling surrounding the Rettendon murders. The first Rise of the Footsoldier was completely on point with its general tone and laid out Carlton Leach's (true) story in an enjoyable enough manner. The movie won so much goodwill in my mind, that I have been on board for all of the subsequent sequels.

Now six movies deep and running solely with purely fictional storylines, that goodwill has wained quite a bit, especially after the weaker efforts in Marbella and Origins. Vengeance, however, managed to gross the highest box office of the entire franchise, and I am curious to see exactly why.

In case you are unfamiliar, Pat Tate was gunned down in the first part of the franchise. All of the subsequent movies are prequels to this event, revolving around Pat and his cohorts and their escapades in and around Essex. Craig Fairbrass is getting on a bit now, but it still looks like he could punch the head off of a regular Joe. He's not quite as psychotically frightening as he has been previously, opting here more for a more quiet "say the wrong word and I'll smash ya" type performance. Vengeance is a lot less goofy without the presence of Tony Tucker and Craig Rolfe and the bad wig department (who should be thoroughly flogged in the market square for some of the worst hairpieces in a non-comedy movie).

If you're familiar with UK TV, you'll probably make the obvious comparison with Eastenders. And yes, Vengeance does seem like a long, more violent episode of Eastenders. But a revenge storyline is something that's easy to get behind.

Overall, I would say that Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance is one of the franchises' more solid efforts. I was under the impression, however, that this would be the last movie in the franchise, yet the finale sets up another sequel which, judging from the box office take, won't take long to greenlight.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy as much as I expected by being a huge fan of this franchise. The story is bland, nothing out of the ordinary than Pat going on a rampage, and I did not recognise any characters returning which me personally would have loved to see. The character acting was great, Craig had a great perfomance nevertheless. In all honesty, it might not be required to see the previous movies of the franchise for this one, the story is basically revolving around him and his friend. Unfortunately, I did not realise the meaning of the hitman present hired by the loan shark first up, he did not appear later in the movie.

I left a very scathing review of Rise of the Footsoldier: Origins, so I feel it is only fair that I should leave one about ROTF: Vengeance.

I am by no means a fan of this franchise and I sat down to watch this film, expecting the usual - constant swearing, misogyny, drug taking, stilted accents and A-level drama quality acting.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The heavy use of the c word (probably 10-15 in this film) and comedic elements have been replaced with a slow-burn storyline, focussing on character development, and the lighting and set pieces were great, which proves that Nick Nevern has really hit his stride with this instalment.

A minor criticism would be that they seemed to bring back one recurring character too many, and the storyline became a touch confusing because of this.

All in all, a very enjoyable watch - the omission of the ghastly Terry Stone character helped immensely.