It was the third production from BAFTA Award-nominated director Julian Gilbey and is based on the autobiography of Leach who had risen from a football hooligan to becoming a bouncer, hired muscle and later part of the Essex firm of the 1990s and his involvement with Pat Tate and Tony Tucker.

[4] The film has an original score by Sandy McLelland and Ross Cullum[5] Full-time crook Carlton Leach (Ricci Hartnett) finds himself in a world of paranoia as he tries to shake off the effects of the Rettendon murders, the real-life clash that left three drug dealers dead.

Things get even worse when he meets notorious hard man Pat Tate and local drug dealer Craig Rolfe, culminating in the Rettendon Range Rover murders of 1995.

The plot follows Pat Tate as he embarks on a rampage to avenge the violent death of his loyal and trusted mate Kenny after their post office robbery doesn't run as smoothly as expected.

Set on executing his revenge, Tate ventures beyond his comfort zone of Essex into the dark side of 1990s Soho to track down the villains responsible, and he will stop at nothing even as the world around him starts to explode.

[14] TimeOut Film Guide (2011 edition) reviewer David Jenkinson describes Rise of the Footsoldier as "a repugnant gangland romp in which ruffians get tooled up with axe handles, baseball bats and Stanley knives then knock ten bells out of each other for two hours."

In America, Videohound's Golden Movie Retriever also disliked it, throwing the film one bone (out of possible four) and dismissing it as "Brit crime flick, based on a true story, that has nothing going for it but violence".