Crime pays... at least it does if you're Stephen Graham, who's played his fair share of movie villains but is crossing to the right side of the law to play a detective in William Monahan's noir thriller London Boulevard.
Monahan, who knows his way around shady moral hinterlands having scripted The Departed and Body Of Lies, makes his directorial debut on the film which is shaping up to be a very interesting ensemble piece.
The talented Graham joins a cast that includes Colin Farrell as a recently-paroled criminal and Keira Knightley who plays the reclusive young thesp he falls for. There's strong support from Ray Winstone, as a former crime boss, as well as David Thewlis and Anna Friel. Presumably Graham will appear somewhere in this mix of likely lads and ladettes to bang some heads together as a CID detective.
London Boulevard sees Graham return to a UK feature after his recent turn as the bad and very mad Baby Face Nelson in Public Enemies, and his upcoming appearance as notorious tax-evader Al Capone in Martin Scorsese's HBO miniseries Boardwalk Empire. He also recently appeared as a returning Iraq veteran in the BBC's acclaimed miniseries Occupation.
Like the recently-announced Statham-fronted thriller Blitz, London Boulevard is based on a novel by hard-boiled Irish crime writer Ken Bruen. Boulevard's shoot is currently underway in West Sussex.