This movie is a sleek and tasty morsel of English gangsterism that only slightly spoils itself with unearned aspirations at being a morality tale. When it takes us inside the black, clawing mind of a beautiful young thug, it's almost captivating. When it takes that thug well into middle age and tries to use him as an example of being careful what you wish for, it's heavy handed and bull headed.
The basic story is pretty simple. In 1968, a tow-headed tough (Paul Bettany) gets taken under the wing of a notorious English criminal named Freddie Mays (David Thewlis). The young gangster becomes part of Freddie's gang and enjoys the perks the English underworld of the late 60s had to offer. But while Freddie may be smart and tough and violent, his new recruit is something else all together. He's less a man and more a walking shark with a soul as dark and hard as a doll's eyes. The young gangster doesn't just want to be rich or powerful. He doesn't want to just take over Freddie's gang. He wants to become Freddie, to subsume him, to fill himself up with Freddie's worldly identity.
The young gangster gets his chance and lives the life of his dreams for 30 years. But then the no-longer-young gangster (Malcolm McDowell) is confronted by his past and by what he's made of himself and his life. He is Gangster No. 1, trapped in an existence where that's important and tormented by a view of a larger, better world where it isn't.
The stuff in this film with Paul Bettany is harsh and more than a little chilling. This is one of the better portraits of the blunt, selfish and somewhat stupid evil that makes up the gangster's character. These guys are not masterminds or super-villains. They are intense appetites, poor self-control and comprehensive self-absorption with no introspection. There's a sick fun to watching Bettany play a fledgling such creature, a little cancer that metastasizes through himself and those around him.
Gangster No. 1 also looks really good with a quick pace and a strong focus to its story. Director Paul McGuigan confronts the audience with the abnormal nature of Bettany's character. He doesn't allow the viewer to look at him through a lens of escapism. McGuigan never lets you get comfortable with imaging yourself as the young gangster, no matter how sharply dressed or coolly powerful he may be.
But whenever Bettany is replaced on screen by Malcolm McDowell, the whole production sputters. Firstly, you can get away with different actors playing a character at different ages, but not when you have other characters at different ages being played by the same actors. For example, when David Thewlis plays opposite Bettany's gangster and then has old-age makeup slapped on him to play opposite the same character now portrayed by McDowell, it looks inescapably silly. 60something Freddie Mays looks like 30something Freddie Mays with gray hair and wrinkles. Malcolm McDowell does not look like Paul Bettany in any but the most generalized sense. You could have had Morgan Freeman play the gangster in middle age and it would have only been slightly more distracting.
The other problem with Gangster No. 1 is that when the gangster gets old, the story become all about how his life of greed and violence and decadence and material obsession has turned hollow and worthless and left him angry and empty and frustrated. But virtually nothing that happens in the gangster's young life establishes or foreshadows or sets up that little morality play. This movie is like watching a softcore porno that arbitrarily turns into a Christian diatribe on abstinence. It's all forced and fake and kind of puzzling.
If you fancy violent tales about violent men, and don't mind if a capricious lecture on the downside of being a horrible person is injected into it, you'll relish watching this movie.
The basic story is pretty simple. In 1968, a tow-headed tough (Paul Bettany) gets taken under the wing of a notorious English criminal named Freddie Mays (David Thewlis). The young gangster becomes part of Freddie's gang and enjoys the perks the English underworld of the late 60s had to offer. But while Freddie may be smart and tough and violent, his new recruit is something else all together. He's less a man and more a walking shark with a soul as dark and hard as a doll's eyes. The young gangster doesn't just want to be rich or powerful. He doesn't want to just take over Freddie's gang. He wants to become Freddie, to subsume him, to fill himself up with Freddie's worldly identity.
The young gangster gets his chance and lives the life of his dreams for 30 years. But then the no-longer-young gangster (Malcolm McDowell) is confronted by his past and by what he's made of himself and his life. He is Gangster No. 1, trapped in an existence where that's important and tormented by a view of a larger, better world where it isn't.
The stuff in this film with Paul Bettany is harsh and more than a little chilling. This is one of the better portraits of the blunt, selfish and somewhat stupid evil that makes up the gangster's character. These guys are not masterminds or super-villains. They are intense appetites, poor self-control and comprehensive self-absorption with no introspection. There's a sick fun to watching Bettany play a fledgling such creature, a little cancer that metastasizes through himself and those around him.
Gangster No. 1 also looks really good with a quick pace and a strong focus to its story. Director Paul McGuigan confronts the audience with the abnormal nature of Bettany's character. He doesn't allow the viewer to look at him through a lens of escapism. McGuigan never lets you get comfortable with imaging yourself as the young gangster, no matter how sharply dressed or coolly powerful he may be.
But whenever Bettany is replaced on screen by Malcolm McDowell, the whole production sputters. Firstly, you can get away with different actors playing a character at different ages, but not when you have other characters at different ages being played by the same actors. For example, when David Thewlis plays opposite Bettany's gangster and then has old-age makeup slapped on him to play opposite the same character now portrayed by McDowell, it looks inescapably silly. 60something Freddie Mays looks like 30something Freddie Mays with gray hair and wrinkles. Malcolm McDowell does not look like Paul Bettany in any but the most generalized sense. You could have had Morgan Freeman play the gangster in middle age and it would have only been slightly more distracting.
The other problem with Gangster No. 1 is that when the gangster gets old, the story become all about how his life of greed and violence and decadence and material obsession has turned hollow and worthless and left him angry and empty and frustrated. But virtually nothing that happens in the gangster's young life establishes or foreshadows or sets up that little morality play. This movie is like watching a softcore porno that arbitrarily turns into a Christian diatribe on abstinence. It's all forced and fake and kind of puzzling.
If you fancy violent tales about violent men, and don't mind if a capricious lecture on the downside of being a horrible person is injected into it, you'll relish watching this movie.