Lost 2005 London gangster film recovered after two decades
A rough cut of a 2005 British crime film funded by drug money has been recovered, highlighting the formidable barriers faced by outsider entrepreneurs in the UK film sector.
Raw footage from a 2005 British crime film, seized by the Metropolitan police two decades ago, has been recovered from a dead hard drive. The film, Breakin’ the Cycle, was the brainchild of Colin Browne, a Hackney drug dealer who wrote the script while serving a prison sentence for cocaine smuggling. Its editor, Lewis Albrow, is now attempting to finish the project.
The making of the film offers a stark, if extreme, case study in the barriers to entry within the UK’s creative industries. Browne and his associate, known only as D, approached film production with the same uncompromising entrepreneurial spirit they applied to their illicit drug business. When they faced pushback from what Albrow describes as a "fairly elitist, slightly closed group of the film and TV drama industry," they simply bypassed traditional gatekeepers. After being refused camera rentals, the pair bought the expensive equipment outright.
Albrow notes that the transferable skills between drug-dealing and film-making included a refusal to be intimidated. The pair intended to "gangster the industry," but their transition into the legitimate creative economy was unstable. They were operating two businesses simultaneously, continuing to deal drugs while filming a narrative about escaping that exact lifestyle.
The production itself was turbulent, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. The cast included rapper Lethal Bizzle and Bradley McIntosh from the pop group S Club 7. McIntosh, who was cast as a drug dealer, said he did not realise until halfway through filming that the script was based on the true lives of the producers. The set occasionally mirrored the script's violence, with the crew facing threats of petrol bombings from rival gangs while shooting on a London estate.
The project collapsed when Browne was killed at 38 during a dispute, and D was arrested and imprisoned, prompting the Met police to confiscate the rough cut. For years, Albrow believed the footage was permanently lost. The story is now the subject of a BBC podcast as Albrow works to finally deliver Browne's original vision.
