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GANGSTER
NO.1
6/10
UK/GER
2000
director - Paul McGuigan
script - Johnny Ferguson, based on the play by Louis Mellis and David
Scinto
cinematographer - Peter Sova
stars - Paul Bettany, Malcolm McDowell, David Thewlis
103 minutes
For an hour and a half, Gangster No.1 is a refreshing and surprising
cinematic treat, barrelling along with an utterly engaging energy and
self-confidence that nimbly combines contrasting strains of black humour
and menacing violence. But at the crucial final stage, the wheels fall
well and truly off the wagon, the speed and power of what's gone before
making the wreckage all the more spectacular and unfortunate. The film
employs a flashback structure, switching between the late sixties and
the present day as the unnamed gangster of the title - McDowell now, Bettany
then - looks back on his blazing entrance into the London crime scene.
Starting off as a lowly henchman for swanky hood Freddie "Butcher of Mayfair"
Mays (Thewlis), our anti-hero rapidly rises to become an invaluable right
hand to his boss - but he has even higher aspirations in mind.
Just like Gangster No.1, in fact . Though it works pretty well
for most of its length as an engaging and gritty thriller, the movie doesn't
hide its grander ambitions - McGuigan's pretentions extend much further
than his refusal to reveal his main character's name. The film can be
seen as a savage deconstruction of the 'classic' British gangster film,
just as our screens are being over-run by its pallid Natural Nylon descendents.
This is solid Get Carter territory, and Richard Bridgland's admirably
restrained production design gets the late-sixties detailing just right
- or just wrong, as in the pivotal scene in Thewlis's car, where the back
projection is (deliberately) as shakily unconvincing as in any British
crime thriller of the era.
But while Michael Caine's Jack Carter was frequently unpleasant, even
he would have felt avoided the company of Bettany's genuinely creepy twentysomething
gangster. McGuigan strips bare Bettany's character to peel back the gangster-movie
trappings of tacky furniture and sharp suits - at one crucial stage he
meticulously undresses before embarking on an orgy of violence - revealing
the psychopathic horrors lurking within. In a film packed full of memorable
images, the hardest to shake are those where Bettany's face suddenly and
inexplicably contorts into a gasping rictus of craziness - at one point
the camera blurring it into visage of grinning horror worthy of Francis
Bacon.
Gangster No.1 is thus at its most effective when making overt what
most crime films are happier burying below the surface - the homoerotic
elements in the relationship between Bettany and Thewlis are so unambiguous
they can scarcely be called undercurrents. Bettany's calm if goggle-eyed
hero-worship soon shades into more aggressive terrain - he doesn't just
want to be like Thewlis, he wants to be him. This general
development, plus the specific visual clue McGuigan uses - Bettany superimposing
his own face on Thewlis's shoulders using the reflections in a pane of
glass - recall Minghella's recent film of The Talented Mr Ripley
(an echo made all the more persistent by the similarity between character
names - Freddie Miles in Ripley, Freddie Mays here). There is
something trite about the way the film quickly throws up a loving heterosexual
relationship - between Thewlis and Saffron Burrows' nightclub singer -
to which Bettany must object. But there's nothing trite or predictable
about the real viciousness that emanates from the key scene in which Burrows
informs Bettany that she has become engaged to Thewlis, and Bettany makes
no attempt to hide his disgust and fury.
Such gleeful bile is rare indeed in cinema these days - but there's only
so far it can take a film. The basic problem with Gangster No.1
is that it is a character study of a deeply unpleasant individual. There's
nothing wrong with having your central character unsympathetic from beginning
to end - De Niro in Raging Bull is the most obvious example - but
Bettany/McDowell is never anything other than a two-dimensional louse,
more of a playwright's mechanism than an actual character. This shortcoming
is unavoidably glaring in the present-day final sequence in which a frazzled
McDowell is confronted by Thewlis, who has just completed a 30-year prison
sentence (for one of Bettany's gruesome murders.) The big payoff that
the movie has been steadily building towards just fizzles out, leaving
McDowell with a very unconvincing final rooftop scene of self-loathing
and despair. It also doesn't help that several of the present-day characters
are played by the 1969 actors under ageing make-up (when has this ever
looked anything but absurd on the big screen?), or that a key character
pops up who the audience presumed was dead - having seen their throat
being rather graphically cut.
Malcolm McDowell is a fine actor, his reputation founded on landmark works
from the sixties/seventies period during which most of this film takes
place. But the result of his fame is that most audiences will know exactly
what McDowell looked like back then - and if you were casting anybody
from this film as a younger McDowell it would surely be Thewlis rather
than Bettany. Similarly, many audiences may feel that the centre of Gangster
No.1 is misplaced - what's the point of making Freddie Mays such an
interesting, original and complex character, only to shunt him off to
the sidelines and focus on his loony-tunes sidekick? Well, it makes for
a much more violent film (though as is the norm for such films these days
the vast majority of the violence takes place off camera), and perhaps
a more unusual one as well. But not really that unusual - McGuigan's
intoxicating visual audacity can't totally prevent him from occasional
lazy lapses into the genre's stalest cliches. The 'ironic' use of upbeat
songs - during the opening and closing titles, and also during the film's
centrepiece murder scene - is especially tiresome.
This review should have already made it plain that Gangster No.1
will be too strong for many viewers - too much blood, too much hardcore
swearing, too much of what Christian film reviewers categorise as 'bad/disrespectful
attitude', though of course there's hardly even any mention of sex at
all. But for all its failings, there's a lot to admire about McGuigan's
debut feature. Although he occasionally overdoes it, and, as I've said,
the film unravels at the end, it always feels like a film, a real
cinematic experience, a vivid way of looking at a vivid world. And, these
days, such achievements are definitely not to be sniffed at.
October
23rd, 2001
(seen
22-Oct-01, UGC Boldon)
by Neil
Young
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