Meet the Primrose Hill Rat Pack

Tonight is the premiere of Love, Honour and Obey, directed by Domenic Anciano and Ray Burdiss. It is another Brit gangster film: macho, dark (Tarantino meets The Sweeney), stylish and fashionably loose. The dialogue is largely improvised and the actors call each other by their real names.

But what is most notable about this film is the cast. In years to come it will be regarded as The Great Escape of the Cool Britannia years - the epitome of Met Bar-culture celluloid. When it comes on the telly at Christmas in 30 years' time, the Birkenstock generation, by now in their sixties, will see the opening credits and say: "Ooh! They're all in it, aren't they?"

And indeed they are "all in it". Love, Honour and Obey features Rhys Ifans, Jude Law, Sean Pertwee, Jonny Lee Miller, Sadie Frost, Ray Winstone and Denise Van Outen. But when you view this noisy, boysy film and are slammed up against the wall by its "shooters" and sharp suits and protracted periods of laddish carousing and playful, hammy performances with the karaoke machine, you can't help thinking that Jude, Sean, Jonny et al are not just the Natural Nylon posse, they are also the living, breathing, British incarnation of the infamous Rat Pack.

Think about it. The parallels are endless. The original Rat Pack, conceived by Humphrey Bogart and called the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, was, according to Kitty Kelley, Frank Sinatra's biographer, dedicated to "drinking, laughing, staying up late and not caring about public opinion". After Bogie's death, the concept was hijacked by Frank, who inducted his mates Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jnr, Peter Lawford and the often forgotten Rat Pack "mouse", Joey Bishop, into the fold.

Fast forward 40 years or so and transfer the action from Nevada to north London and instead of the Holby Hills Rat Pack, we have the Primrose Hill Rat Pack - a bunch of energetic, magnetic actors who are also dedicated to "laughing, drinking and staying up late" and couldn't give a gee-whizz for public opinion. But who are the players that make up their scene?

Jude Law has to be Frank Sinatra. Not only is he as skinny and as impossibly suave and dishy as a young Frank, but he also shares Sinatra's almost preternatural ability to wear a suit like a second skin and is developing into a star of calibre and cinematic pull. With his looks, talent and way with the ladies, he commands the utmost respect from the rest of the crew.

Amiably geeky Jonny Lee Miller, the impish comedian of the gang, could be Sammy Davis Jnr, while big Ray Winstone is a must for roguish Dean Martin, and urbane, quintessentially English Sean Pertwee is Peter Lawford. Substitute the infamous Rat Pack HQs of The Desert Inn or The Sands Casino in Las Vegas for The Met Bar or the View Bar on top of Home in Leicester Square, and you have nailed the UK Pack's hang-outs.

Sadie Frost, Donna Air and various All Saints are the Ava Gardeners and Mia Farrows while Fran Cutler, the notoriously exacting party princess who controls London's most covetable little list, is Sam Giancana, the legendary Mafia boss who controlled most of Vegas's nightspots in the 1960s.

The much talked about moments in the film where the guys are fooling around on the karaoke machine hark back to the days of the Rat Pack's legendary "Summit" performances in Vegas, which involved more goofing around and ad-libs than actual performance. Just like Frank and his chums, Jonny, Ray and co flaunt their flat notes and fluff the melodies with an enviable dash. It only needs Jude Law to suddenly break into a few bars of Come Fly With Me, and even the boys would be swooning.

There are other parallels. Lawford introduced his buddies to the upper echelons of American society when he married Jack Kennedy's sister Patricia in 1954 (Frank renamed the group "the Jack Pack" for a while in honour of occasional member JFK). Sean Pertwee introduced his pals to high society when he married the Honorable Jacqui Hamilton Smith, daughter of Lord Colwyn, at a ceremony in the House of Lords in 1999. Her cute maids of honour (Kate Moss, Lisa Moorish, Sadie Frost, Liza Walker) were known in some circles as "the Jac Pack" for a while.