Gangster No. 1
*1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Bromborough)
Released in the UK by Film Four on June 9, 2000; certificate 18; 102 minutes;
country of origin UK; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Paul McGuigan; produced by
Jonathan Cavendish, Norma Heyman.
Written by Johnny Ferguson.
Photographed by Peter Sova; edited by Andrew
Hulme.
CAST.....
Paul Bettany..... Young Gangster
Malcolm McDowell..... Gangster 55
David Thewlis..... Freddie Mays
Saffron Burrows..... Karen
Jamie Foreman..... Lennie Taylor
It occurs to the two young hoods, when aimlessly
looking down the street, that one of their henchmen is in the car of a rival
crime boss. What information is he giving them? No time can be wasted in
finding out. They go to his apartment, wait for him to show up, then make
domestic small talk with him. But of course they're not there to talk about
tea and laundry, and they're sliding uneasily close to the man, so there's
something threatening in the air. Then the axe comes out.
This is a scene of tremendous tension. Another
great moment in Paul McGuigan's "Gangster No.1" starts as a
silly homage to "A Clockwork Orange" but turns out to be an amazingly effective
portrayal of torture-homicide. The camera is hand-held, blurred and dizzying,
and seems to try struggling away from the attacker: it's from the victim's
point of view.
Nothing else in the movie matches these two scenes.
It's not one of those crass, smart-arsed "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels"
rip-offs, like a glimpse at the adverts would suggest, but it doesn't really
have a story, and for long stretches feels phoney. Early on we meet an anonymous
55-year old gangster (Malcolm McDowell), who brags on the voice-over about
how great he is. Most of the picture's running time is devoted to flashback,
as we learn how his younger self (Paul Bettany) rose from the status of
nondescript young thug to gangland kingpin by way of lies, manipulation and
murder.
This sounds a lot more exciting than it plays.
Bettany inhabits the gangster with icy conviction, but that really just involves
a lot of nasty grimacing. He's not given much to say. What that leaves us
with is a rather conventionally structured story about an ambitious person's
ascent to power, distinguished only by this particular person's unbelievable
sadism. As there is no character study, you'd think that the film is leading
somewhere in terms of plot, but it isn't. An hour and a half is spent on
the young gangster, there's a five-minute montage about the rest of his life,
and then we get a lacklustre finale where he tries to show off his riches
to the crime boss he usurped. The man is not impressed, and the oh-so-profound
message is that base living alienates other people.
Paul McCartney once sang about that: "Don't you
know that it's a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder?"
That lyric is better than "Gangster No.1" because its wisdom is succinct
and it doesn't shove a load of pointless violence at us. Watching this movie,
with its strange emphasis on backstory, inane present-day scenes and nominal
coverage of stuff in between, I got the feeling that McGuigan's main concern
was not creating a coherent story, but making sure everything he was shooting
added up to something feature length.
It is obvious from the start of the movie that
we're not in the hands of a confident filmmaker. The opening shot -- which
sees a pile of vacant fat-cats sitting around a table, sipping brandies,
smoking cigars, trying to pretend they're classy gents -- feels the need
to show everything in ugly slow-motion close-ups, play "It's the Good Life"
on the soundtrack, and have Malcolm McDowell's voice-over explain every obvious
thematic detail. The flashbacks are similarly flawed, in that they have a
good sense of period but not of atmosphere. To seem tough, guys strut around
making threats and saying the f-word a lot, but "Gangster No.1" doesn't achieve
the hellish sense of realism seen in such genre classics as "The Long Good
Friday" and "Get Carter". Twice it comes close.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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