GANGSTER comedy thriller DEAD MAN RUNNING (15) is guaranteed to pull in the audiences. Produced by England footballers Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole, it stars American rap megastar Curtis 50 Cent Jackson, Brit movie geezers Danny Dyer and Tamer Hassan

GANGSTER comedy thriller DEAD MAN RUNNING (15) is guaranteed to pull in the audiences.

Produced by England footballers Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole, it stars American rap megastar Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Brit movie "geezers" Danny Dyer and Tamer Hassan, Bafta Award-winner Brenda Blethyn and stand-up comic Omid Djalili.

Nick Kane (Hassan) is a reformed ex-con with 24 hours to find �100,000 of borrowed blood money. Thigo (50 Cent) is a powerful New York loan shark who is jetting across the Atlantic to make a brutal example of Nick and everyone he loves - starting with his wheelchairbound mother (Blethyn).

Hurtling through the UK's criminal underworld, from east London's dog tracks to the drug-dens of Manchester, Nick and his best friend Bing (Dyer) must go to desperate, deadly lengths to scam up the cash before it's too late. The clock is ticking.

Manchester United and England star Ferdinand grew up on the same Peckham estate as Hassan, though he is a few years younger, and says: "I fancied being an actor when I was a kid."

Hassan, who has starred in Layer Cake, Football Factory and The Business, and who is an executive producer on the film, says: "Like Nick, I had to turn my own life around because one day I realised no one was going to do it for me.

"Everything Pikki [producer Nicholas Fearon] and I have managed to get for this movie, we have had to go out and fight for.

"It is not easy putting together the finance for an independent British movie, but I'm sure we will all reap the benefits of a successful movie at the end of it."

The film is written and directed by Alex De Rakoff, who directed Hassan and Orlando Bloom in The Calcium Kid.