Gangster No.1
nited Kingdom/Germany/Ireland 2000
Reviewed by Mark Kermode
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
London, the present. At the top table at a hotel boxing match ageing crime boss Gangster learns that his former boss Freddie Mays is being released from prison after 30 years.
London, 1968. Young thug Gangster rises through the ranks of Freddie Mays' henchmen, becoming Freddie's right-hand man. When Gangster beats up one of crime boss Lennie Taylor's men, Taylor orders the petrol bombing of Freddie's club. To avoid a gang war, Taylor and Freddie agree to a truce. As Freddie courts hostess Karen, Gangster grows jealous. When Gangster and fellow gang member Roland learn from burglar Eddie Miller of a plot to kill Freddie, Gangster kills Roland, and allows the attempt on the lives of Karen and Freddie to go ahead. After the attack, which Freddie and Karen survive, Gangster slays Lennie and his right-hand man Maxie King, for which crime Freddie is found guilty and sent to prison.
Thirty years later Gangster visits a terrified Eddie and Karen and finally meets Freddie. Gangster offers Freddie money, which he spurns, and then hands him a gun, demanding to be shot. Freddie turns his back on Gangster and leaves him alone.
Review
When Paul McGuigan's dark feature debut was first screened in the UK, preview audiences were promised that this was their only chance to see the film uncut, so certain were the distributors that it would incur the censors' wrath. Some months later, as Gangster No. 1 opens without cuts, those early attempts to market it as an exercise in controversy-courting extremity seem misguided. For despite its often harrowing portrayal of the profession of violence (and notwithstanding Malcolm McDowell's baffling claim that the film "makes A Clockwork Orange look like Disney"), McGuigan's gangland epic is ill-served by expectations of outrage. Indeed, for a film whose plot pivots around a few instances of spectacularly brutal savagery, Gangster No. 1 remains surprisingly discreet in its choice of what to show in all its gory glory, and what to leave to the imaginings of the audience.
Owing more to Jez Butterworth's tale of feuding Soho club owners Mojo (with which Gangster No. 1 shares both a theatrical background and a production designer, Richard Bridgland) than to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, this highbrow/lowlife crime cocktail niftily adapts Louis Mellis' and David Scinto's stage play for the screen, courtesy of some solidly cinematic screenwriting by Johnny Ferguson and a surprisingly sure-footed showing by McGuigan.
McGuigan's past track record has been somewhat erratic. Although his made-for-television short The Granton Star Cause was a stand-out piece of black comedy, the subsequent big-screen trilogy which it spawned, The Acid House, lacked any form of control or coherence. Here, McGuigan proves conclusively that the failings of The Acid House were more a result of its inauspiciously 'organic' production history than of any lack of creative vision on the part of its director. For whatever else Gangster No. 1 may be, it is a cohesive whole, a singular vision of a world whose clammy odour drips from the screen in all its rancid rot.
Expertly shot by Czech director of photography Peter Sova, who brought a disjointed intimacy to films as diverse as Barry Levinson's Diner and Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco, Gangster offers a chronically fractured vision of underworld London, split not only in the juxtaposition of its two alienated time zones (the 60s, the present day) but within the confines of the frame itself. Epitomising this uneasy disparity are the figures of Freddie and Gangster. Both are knee deep in the coagulant slime of violent crime, yet beautifully attired in Jermyn Street drag, the chunky gaucheness of their glittery jewellery and furnishings offsetting the classical beauty of their suits, fashioned from shimmeringly reflective cloth, then cut to within an inch of their life.
It's the prosaic removal of these clothes that presages Gangster's most notorious (and also most inventive) sequence: the prolonged butchering by the eponymous anti-hero of his gangland rival Lennie Taylor. A textbook example of how to torture an audience's mind without ever actually assaulting their eyes, this episode is shot entirely from the point of view of the victim, thus allowing McGuigan to lead the audience through a horrendous orgy of pain while keeping their gaze always on the perpetrator rather than his crimes. The result is a sequence which is almost unwatchably discreet, a gruelling vision of lustful destruction which veers away from lascivious titillation even as the rape-like ravaging of the victim reaches a revolting climax. No wonder the censors kept their knives safely sheathed throughout.
On a performance level, the real eye-opener is Paul Bettany, who brings a genuinely believable psychosis to the role of the young Gangster, an element sadly lacking from Malcolm McDowell's wraparound turns. Although the part seems tailor made for the former droogie (producer Norma Heyman also calls it "a modern-day Caligula," invoking another of her star's touchstone roles), McDowell never relaxes into either the accent or the attitude. One cannot help but wonder how much better things could have been had the splendid Bettany handled all the Clockwork Orange-style voiceover himself. Eddie Marsan's performance as gang's bumbling runt Eddie, forever trembling with a nervous energy that seems to threaten his very existence, is also a standout; the kitchen-bound scene in which Gangster and Roland literally scare him into unconsciousness is one of the best in the film. Otherwise, it's a handsomely ugly affair, well dressed enough to make a few friends, but tough enough to make just as many enemies.
Credits
- Director
- Paul McGuigan
- Producers
- Norma Heyman
- Jonathan Cavendish
- Screenplay
- Johnny Ferguson
- Based on the play by Louis Mellis
- David Scinto
- Director of Photography
- Peter Sova
- Editor
- Andrew Hulme
- Production Designer
- Richard Bridgland
- Music
- John Dankworth
- ©No.1 Films Ltd & Road Movies Filmproduktion GmbH
- Production Companies
- FilmFour presents a Pagoda Film & Television Corporation production in
- association with Road Movies Filmproduktion
- with the participation of British Screen and BSkyB
- In association with NFH and LittleBird Productions
- With the support of Filmboard Berlin Brandenburg
- Executive Producer
- Peter Bowles
- Co-producers
- Nicky Kentish Barnes
- Ulrich Felsberg
- Line Producers
- Additional Photography:
- Sheila Fraser Milne
- German Crew:
- Karsten Brünig
- Production Co-ordinators
- Rebecca Sutton
- Road Movies:
- Gabrielle Niemeyer
- Production Managers
- Jo Farr
- German Crew:
- Ralph Remstedt
- Unit Manager
- Claire Tovey
- Location Managers
- Adam Richards
- Additional Photography:
- Scott Rowlatt
- Post-production Supervisor
- Steve Barker
- Assistant Directors
- Chris Carreras
- Robert P. Grayson
- Fiona Richards
- Crowd:
- Susan Wood
- 2nd Unit:
- Mark Fenn
- Simon Moseley
- Waldo Roeg
- Additional Photography:
- Davina Nicholson
- German Crew:
- Viviane Kriebisch
- Script Supervisor
- Libbie Barr
- Casting
- Jina Jay
- Directors of Photography
- Additional Photography:
- Adrian Biddle
- Alistair Walker
- 2nd Unit Lighting Cameramen
- Mike Frift
- Nic Milner
- Digital Visual Effects
- Mill Film
- Additional Compositing
- Das Werk, Munich
- Back Projection/Visual Effects
- Specialist Film Projection Services
- Special Effects
- Supervisor:
- Dave Harris
- Additional Photography:
- Graham Longhurst
- Graphic Designer
- Alan Payne
- Art Directors
- Philip Elton
- German Crew:
- Sebastian Krawinkel
- Set Decorator
- Penny Crawford
- Draughtspeople
- Stuart Kearns
- Helen Xenopoulos
- Storyboard Artist
- Steve Forrest Smith
- Costume Designer
- Jany Temime
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Wilfried Laudicina
- Hair/Make-up Designer
- Jenny Shircore
- Chief Make-up/Hair Artist
- Norma Webb
- Make-up/Hair Artists
- Fiona Maynard
- Caroline Hamilton
- Prosthetics
- Animated Extras
- Titles/Film Opticals
- Studio Three
- Musician
- Gilad Atzmon
- Studio Co-ordinator
- Gloria Luck
- Music Engineer
- Gary Thomas
- Soundtrack
- "The Good Life" - Neil Hannon; "Lazy Sunday" - The Small Faces; "Va Ba Ba Boom" - Edmundo Ross; "Berts Apple Crumble" - The Quik; "Ten Guitars" - Engelbert Humperdinck; "Why" - Anthony Newley; "Mercy Mercy Mercy" - Saffron Burrows; "Kill" - Albertos y Los Trios Paranoias; "Blockbuster" - The Sweet"; "Who's Making Love"; "Utopia"
- Choreography
- Esther Mary Thompson
- Sound Design
- Simon Fisher Turner
- Sound Design Producer
- Richard Preston
- Sound Recordists
- John Taylor
- Additional Photography:
- Martin Trevis
- Re-recording Mixer
- Tim Alban
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Peter Baldock
- Dialogue Editor
- Gillian Dodders
- Background Artists
- Wavevend
- Early Call
- ADR Mixer
- Jens Christensen
- Foley
- Artist:
- Andie Derrick
- Editor:
- Ben Barker
- Consultant
- Bruce Reynolds
- Stunt Co-ordinator
- Jim Dowdall
- Armourers
- Richard Hooper
- Joss
- German Crew:
- Bernd Rautenberg
- Cast
- Malcolm McDowell
- Gangster 55
- David Thewlis
- Freddie Mays
- Paul Bettany
- young Gangster
- Saffron Burrows
- Karen
- Kenneth Cranham
- Tommy
- Jamie Foreman
- Lennie Taylor
- Razaaq Adoti
- Roland
- Doug Allen
- Mad John
- Eddie Marsan
- Eddie Miller
- David Kennedy
- Fat Charlie
- Andrew Lincoln
- Maxie King
- Cavan Clerkin
- Billy
- Johnny Harris
- Derek
- Anton Valensi
- Trevor
- Alex McSweeney
- bloke in tailor's
- Martin Wimbush
- judge
- Binky Baker
- dodgy geezer
- Martyn Read
- rough diamond
- Johnnie Ould
- Scarey
- Don McCorkindale
- smashing bloke
- Ralph Collis
- Stocky
- Charles Anderson
- Brute
- Arthur Nightingale
- toilet attendant
- Jack Pierce
- Jack the Lad
- Emma Griffiths-Malin
- Julie
- Gary McCormack
- Giggler Bennett
- Sean Chapman
- bent cop
- Georgina Bull
- Fat Charlie's girl
- Jo-Anne Nighy
- Simone Bowkett
- Roland's girls
- Caroline Pegg
- Flo
- Mark Montgomerie
- thug car
- Dave Ould
- Eric
- Lisa Ellis
- waitress
- Simon Marc
- Freddie's attacker
- Tony Denham
- club manager
- Nadine Leonard
- Mel
- Jo McInnes
- Lesley
- Lorraine Stanley
- attacker's friend
- Wayne Matthews
- Tony Bowers
- Danny Webster
- youths
- Certificate
- 18
- Distributor
- Film Four Distributors
- 9,232 feet
- 102 minutes 35 seconds
- Dolby Stereo
- In Colour