I’ve never been overly keen on British Gangster movies. Not the classic ones like The Long Good Friday and Get Carter, no I’m cool with them – the British gangster movies I’m talking about are the ones that sprang up in the wake of Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and was subsequently supercharged by the release of Guy Richie’s Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. While I gave Richie an easy pass due to his comic timing and his willingness to poke fun at the whole thing, the majority of what followed was a mess of posturing and gurning as a bunch of sharp suited wideboys were glorified for doing horrible things and blurting out the c-word every few seconds.
But while most were generic crap, every now and then something interesting would rise to the surface and try to do something different from the norm and one such example is the stripped bare, vaguely trippy Gangster No. 1 which not only helped move director Paul (Lucky Number Slevin) McGuigan into the crime genre, but also brought Paul Bettany to the attention of the world.
As a boxing match is in full swing, we focus on the suited and booted mob boss we only get to know as Gangster 55 as he holds court with a bunch of similarly law-adjacent underlings. However, while they cackle at his boorish jokes, the tone instantly changes when someone mentions that former boss, Freddie Mays, is yo be released from prison after spending thirty years inside. Foe whatever reason, this snaps Gangster 55 out of his revelry and while he steps out to take a piss, his mind wanders back to the 60s as he recalls the start of his accent up the criminal ladder.
Known to us in this time frame as “Younger Gangster”, we see him being plucked from criminal obscurity by Freddie Mays himself, an intelligent man of some influence who also likes to act the gentleman despite being able to switch into the rough stuff with no problem. Right from the get-go, Younger Gangster looks up to his boss, almost seeing him as a template of who he’d ultimately like to be once he becomes more seasoned – but while Mays is capable of rational thinking and love, Younger Gangster is nothing short of an ice cold psychopath.
Trouble start to brew when Mays falls for Karen, a working girl from a club and as the two fall ever more in love, Younger Gangster allows the pang of jealousy to steer him into some rather extreme behaviour. After getting wind of a planned attempt on the life of Mays by another gangster, Younger Gangster decides to sit on the information in order to pull some sort of coup. But as we watch his bloody grab for power, we also see what trying to live up to that ideal has done to his psyche in the present day. How will Gangster 55 react to his former mentor being free once more now that he may have to face up to his betrayal?
Gangster No. 1 is something of a wilfully strange beast. While it checks a lot of boxes that you’d find in your standard, average crime flick (plotting, violence, liberal use of the c-word), it also treats the ascension of our title character as something of a surreal experience as director McGuigan adds a bunch of flamboyant touches to give this tale of obsession an almost dreamlike feel. Not only does this also cover up a noticably tight budget, but it makes this particular cockney knockabout stand out from a particularly dense crowd. While this dream logic does create some inconsistencies to those used to more standard fare (how is Mays charged for the murder of the man who attacked him when he’s requiring 300 switches and healing from two bullet holes?), but I have to say it seems like a breath of fresh air when compared to the lion’s share of the other, low budget, crime fraternity that was released at the time. In fact, when it comes to dismantling the mind of alpha male career criminals and revealing them to be rather empty vessels, Gangster No. 1 does a far better job of actualising it than Guy Richie’s flashier, but infinitely more confounding Revolver that came five year later.
However, a sizable plus comes in the form of the cast that includes heavyweights and up and comers that get stuck into the material like dogs at feeding time. Filling out the more outer roles are such faces as Andrew Lincoln and Eddie Marsan (who manages to produce impressive, Blair Witch levels of snot when his life is imperiled), but we also get David Thewlis as Freddie Mays and Saffron Burrows as the woman who falls for him. However, all are mere window dressing for the dual performances that bring both incarnations of Gangster 55 to life and it’s here where the movie manages to derive most of its more memorable moments.
Portraying the older version of Gangster is the irrepressible Malcolm McDowell who spends most of his screen time proving that his shit-eating grin from Clockwork Orange still works a treat and even when he’s experiencing an existential breakdown, ranting at the air or casually spraying piss into a glass of champagne, his exaggerated showboating proves to be highly memorable. But on the flip side, Paul Bettany shows his mettle by showing off the Younger Criminal as a legitimately terrifying, coldly calculating lunatic who gets maximum mileage out of those piercing, frigid, blue eyes of his. Bettany also provides his version of the character with genuinely unnerving tics, such as his strange, utterly unnerving habit of bearing his teeth and squealing like an animal whenever the time comes to kill someone and the anticipation is too much. He also has a habit of stripping down to his pants and vest like a 70s school child who has forgotten his P.E. kit whenever he really gets to go to town on a quivering victim and the movie really is at its best whenever Bettany is allowed to do his thing.
Beyond that, I have to say I found Gangster No. 1 to be more intriguing and fascinating than gripping and repeatedly discovered myself becoming sightly obsessed with some of McGuigan’s filmmaking choices over the actual story. For example, I’ve no idea why the director chose to have two seperate actors play the unnamed Gangster while everyone else plays their 2000 counterpart while slathered in old age makeup, but it certainly adds to the strange, unreality that McGuigan seems to be shooting for. He also leaves a lot of the violence to the imagination too, cutting away or leaving entire death scenes occurring off-screen entirely which also adds to that surrealist feel.
However, while there are many great things about Gangster No. 1, it just didn’t grip me totally. Maybe it’s the fact that everyone’s milking the cockney accent way too much (“You caaaaaaaaaaants!”), or I’m just unable to get on board with the genre as a whole, but while I enjoyed this particular gangster, I wouldn’t say he’s my number one…
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