‘Mint’ Review: Ambition Outpaces Impact in ‘Snapper’ Director Charlotte Regan’s Stylish BBC Crime Drama Series [C+] Berlinale

After the breakout success of Scrapper, her acclaimed indie debut starring Harris Dickinson, the bar for Charlotte Regan’s next project was inevitably set high. That film introduced her as a distinctive new voice in British cinema: socially aware without turning moralistic, stylistically playful yet marked by striking emotional precision. Scrapper felt immediate, authentic and vibrantly alive. With Mint, which premiered in the Berlinale Special Series and is distributed by the BBC as a mini series, Regan now widens her scope considerably.

The intimate coming of age drama gives way to a four part crime family saga set in Scotland, with episodes running between 25 and 30 minutes. Classic gangster iconography collides with sweeping romantic impulses and touches of magical realism. On paper, it reads as a natural progression: a larger format, a broader ensemble, yet still grounded in Regan’s ongoing interest in working class identity, desire, and the search for belonging. In execution, however, the series only partially succeeds in shaping these ambitions into a cohesive and dramatically satisfying whole. Mint is visually striking and tonally assured, but its storytelling never quite achieves the narrative force or emotional urgency the genre demands. At the center is Shannon (Emma Laird), the 22 year old daughter of a powerful local crime boss. Living in the shadow of her father Dylan (Sam Riley) and the mythology surrounding her family name, Shannon oscillates between defiant self assurance and aching vulnerability. She longs for something real, for an escape from the path already laid out for her, and finds it in Arran (Ben Coyle Larner), a newcomer entangled with a rival crime family. Their connection unfolds with near mythic intensity. Sparks literally fly at their first meeting, glances linger in heightened slow motion, and the world around them briefly dissolves into stylized abstraction.

Regan has described the show as a fusion of gangster films and sweeping romance, and that duality shapes the series. Shannon and Arran are positioned as both pawns and potential rebels within rigid systems of loyalty and violence, their relationship mirroring the slow collapse of Shannon’s parents’ marriage and reframing the crime drama as a story about generational inheritance. Emma Laird emerges as the clear standout, giving Shannon a volatile unpredictability that exposes insecurity beneath her bravado. Ben Coyle Larner brings a natural, understated presence in his acting debut, yet the writing grants him limited emotional depth, leaving the central romance more aesthetically constructed than deeply felt. Where the tv series asserts itself most confidently is in its visual language. Regan’s music video background informs the rhythm and texture, from grainy camcorder footage to operatic slow motion and carefully curated soundtrack choices. Scotland becomes both claustrophobic and mythic, each frame deliberately composed. But for all its stylistic assurance, the writing feels comparatively thin. Conflicts rarely escalate with sustained intensity, and stakes that should feel existential remain muted, turning moments of intended tragedy into visually striking but emotionally restrained set pieces.

At times, Mint allows the surface to eclipse substance. The series gestures toward themes of identity, loyalty, and self determination, yet rarely probes them with enough precision or urgency to give them lasting weight. It hovers between crime saga and romantic reverie, never fully committing to the structural demands of either. That same ambivalence shapes its depiction of the criminal world. The camera lingers on the iconography of gang culture, sharp tailoring, ritualized standoffs, loaded silences, while the social dynamics that might ground this universe remain underexplored. The result can feel less like an immersive portrait than a stylized interpretation of crime mythology. The operatic imagery is striking, but it creates a distance that makes sustained emotional investment harder to achieve.

It would be too reductive to frame the series solely in terms of success or failure. Regan’s instinct to portray working class characters with wit, yearning, contradiction and even touches of glamour instead of unrelenting gloom continues to distinguish her voice. At its strongest, the show briefly recaptures a sense of visual lyricism and immediacy, with moments where awkward humor and heightened drama converge into something genuinely moving. What lingers is the impression of a filmmaker stretching her aesthetic across a broader canvas, testing scale and genre. The ambition is evident and her command of tone and imagery remains assured. Still, aesthetic confidence and ambitious ideas by themselves are not enough to sustain a multi-episode narrative. In the absence of sharper storytelling momentum and deeper thematic excavation, the series finds it difficult to leave a lasting impression.

Rather than signaling regression, Mint feels more like a period of exploration. For a director who began with such clarity, this project suggests expansion of territory rather than hesitation. There is something invigorating about watching a filmmaker resist repetition and instead test new terrain. Perhaps this willingness to take risks, to stretch, and even to embrace unevenness is precisely what will shape whatever comes next. Even if this mini series does not fully cohere, Charlotte Regan remains a voice whose next work feels genuinely exciting to anticipate.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival, where Mint had its world premiere in the Special Series section.