YMMV / The 51st State

• Americans Hate Tingle: The film was panned by American critics but got better reviews over in Britain.
• Jerkass Woobie: The skinheads. Pretty much every scene they're in shows them taking damage due to their own recklessness and stupidity. Of course, they're Nazis, so you don't really feel bad for them.
• Love to Hate: Kane who's so crooked and yet so Adorkable you almost want to see him succeed. Being played by Sean Pertwee helps too.
• Magnificent Bastard: Elmo McElroy is a former pharmacology graduate turned drug chemist, who decides to betray his boss the Lizard, and sell his new drug POS 51 to a gangster in Liverpool himself in order to get out of the drug business. McElroy rigs a machine in his lab so that it will blow up when the Lizard turns up his thermostat, but not before letting his lab mice go. When his buyer is killed by Dawn "Dakota" Parker, McElroy teams up with Felix DeSouza to find a new buyer and tricks a group of skinheads into allowing them to use their labs to brew POS 51. Convincing Dawn to betray the Lizard, McElroy engineers a plan that would kill the Lizard and put the corrupt Virgil Kane behind bars at the same time. Having Dawn lead the Lizard into a trap, McElroy tricks the Lizard into digesting an explosive drug that would go off the exact moment Kane comes in to arrest the group, before revealing that POS 51 is just a placebo and escaping once his plan goes off without a hitch. A master chemist and skilled salesman, McElroy ends the film finally a free man.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Kane is played by Sean Pertwee, who's now more fondly remembered as Sgt Wells. Or else Alfred the Butler.
  • Dawn is likewise more recognisable as McKenzie Hale from The Newsroom.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The film never mentions it again after the introduction, but Elmo would have spent his life as a legitimate chemist (with perhaps a small sideline growing pot) if not his nascent career being ruined by a single arrest for marijuana possession. Instead, he became a comedic version of Walter White.

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