An old gangster is advised that Freddie Mays would leave jail after thirty years in prison. His mood changes and he recalls when he was a young punk and who joined Freddie's gang—a man he both envied and ultimately betrayed.
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Gangster No. 1 shows a completely different style of film in terms of the Gangster sub-genre. It's more about the unfulfilled psychotic man who wants it all st every cost. A great performance from Paul Bethany and a great cast filled with British Drama actors (with an obligatory role for Jamie foreman). I'm slightly confused as to why all other characters remained the same and made up in older age, whilst Paul Bethany turns into Malcolm McDowell, perhaps that's a more symbolic gesture.
I suspect there's a very interesting backstory to the making of Gangster No. 1. Consider the casting. The main body of the film is raised to almost mythical status by the pairing of David Thewlis and Paul Bettany. Neither has given a better performance and the chemistry is to die for. Think "Single White Female" relocated to 1960s London gangsters. The movie begins in the more or less present, then goes back to the 60s before ending back where we started. Everything in that 60s segment is perfect. It's not only the leads. Every character is on the money. It's rarely that everything comes together in this way but here it does. Ageing actors by thirty years within one movie offers a real challenge to the filmmaker but here the ageing is spot on, utterly credible. Which makes the substitution of Paul Bettany with Malcom McDowell for the present-day scenes incomprehensible. It simply doesn't work. But it gets worse. McDowell's a terrific actor but here it's as though nobody showed him Bettany's footage. He's playing a completely different character. Voice, accent, mannerisms, movement, walk. They're all different to Bettany's and it almost destroys the film. That it doesn't, that Gangster No. 1 is still one of the finest gangster films you'll see, is the tragedy here. Forget "one of the...". It could have been Oscar winningly, eat your heart out Francis great. And then there's the script. I have a copy of a play, by the same name and clearly from the same source but the writers' names appear nowhere in the movie credits. As I said at the beginning of this review, an interesting backstory. It's a shame that the film and we the audience paid the price.
I thought Gran Torino was the worst film I'd ever seen based on awful acting, hilarious dialog and as a vehicle for a has been, but this film makes Gran Torino look like Ghandi. You know you are watching a bomb when you are laughing at a film that's not meant to be a comedy, as was the case with Gran Torino, but when you stop laughing and have the urge to cry, then you are watching Gangster No. 1. Malcolm McDowell has to be the worst actor that ever walked the earth. I would advise anyone who values a good script, a good screenplay, and most of all decent acting, to avoid this film like they would avoid a particularly noxious disease. I never thought I would see a film that makes Gran Torino look good, I've found it!
As I am generally quite easily pleased even by the most average of films, it takes a disaster of epic proportions to motivate me to comment on their faults at length. Here is an example.Being a fan of British cinema in general, I have found myself entertained by the glut of British gangster movies released in the late Nineties/ early noughties so I have to admit I was looking forward to a fun 90 minute distraction when I came across Gangster No. 1What we have here appears on the surface to be The Talented Mr Ripley meets The Krays, where by a cocky young crook stalks (for want of a better word) his classy mobster boss, destroys his relationship and generally tries to take over his life by using shall we say, less than ethical tactics. We flashback to London in the swinging sixties where we meet the unnamed Gangster 55, played in his youth by Bettany who displays rare but outstanding moments of cold detachment that stand above and beyond anything else in this film. Forward to 1999 and we meet the contemporary 55, who is now for some reason played by Malcolm McDowell giving a performance so poor and boring that his co stars seem visibly embarrassed. McGuigan over-directs to the point that he appears to be confusing himself, one scene portrays a brutal assault played out to lighthearted background music a la Resovoir Dogs displaying none of the panache and power of Tarantino's masterpiece. Even the novelty factor of seeing the scene from the victims POV appears tacked on when compared to the subsequent Cafe battering dished out in L4yer Cake which emulated it. A criminally underused Saffron Burrows joins what appears to be an excellent supporting cast, but even the core blimey guvnor genius of Kenneth Cranham and Jamie Forman cannot inject any life into what has to be one of the most lacklustre scripts of recent years:"You alright?" "Yeah." "Yeah?" "Yeah." "Yeah?"Utter rubbish
