By Jason Anderson
"This isn't really a gangster film," says
Scottish director Paul McGuigan. "If it wasn't for the title..."
He laughs, perhaps regretting the decision not to name his
film Fluffy Bunny No. 1. But it is indeed Gangster No. 1, and it comes duly
equipped with thugs boasting Cockney accents, short tempers and monikers like
Fat Charlie. What else could it be?
"So yeah," McGuigan admits, "it's a gangster
film, but it's a serious one."
That's an important distinction, because when Gangster No. 1
made its debut in the U.K. almost 18 months ago, it arrived alongside a series
of toothless Limey crime pics (Circus; Fast Food; Love, Honor & Obey) that
were largely derivative of the flashy, snarky style of Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock
and Two Smoking Barrels. McGuigan was "a bit concerned it would get thrown
in with all the crap."
But most British critics saw Gangster No. 1 for what it was:
a uniquely visceral and vicious take on gangster-movie tropes. First among its
virtues is the berserk lead performance by Paul Bettany, who played Chaucer in A
Knight's Tale and is the lead of McGuigan's forthcoming film, Sacrifice. Bettany stars as an ambitious and unhinged young criminal in late-'60s
London. Malcolm McDowell plays the same nameless gangster in a parallel,
contemporary story that forms the film's last act.
The steely-eyed upstart does his best to emulate his
sharp-suited boss, Freddie Mays (David Thewlis), but soon betters him in the
sadism department. Freddie's fortunes enter a sharp decline after he goes to war
with a competing crime boss (Jamie Foreman) and gets soft over a bird (Saffron
Burrows), and the young gangster eagerly turns the situation to his advantage.
With its daring visuals, wild performances and rich,
obscenity-laden dialogue, Gangster No. 1 was clearly the best in the post-Lock,
Stock barrel. Alas, it arrives in Toronto only two weeks after another excellent
British gangster pic, Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast. Similarities are hardly
accidental: Gangster No. 1 was originally to be directed by Glazer and was
adapted from a play written by Sexy Beast's writers, Louis Mello and David
Scinto.
Gangster No. 1 is nevertheless a different animal than Sexy
Beast. Bearing the influence of the brutal gangster movies of the '30s (Public
Enemy, Scarface) as much as their '60s pop-art counterparts (Tokyo Drifter,
Point Blank), Gangster No. 1 is more aggressive and much more violent.
Originally a photographer and documentary filmmaker in
Glasgow, McGuigan fell into feature filmmaking when he was invited by his mate
Irvine Welsh to make a short based on one of Welsh's stories. McGuigan ended up
directing the 1999 Welsh anthology film The Acid House. McGuigan was attracted
to Welsh's stories because "even though there's a lot of swearing and
'cunts' and 'fucks' and stuff, there's a real poetry to the language."
The same could be said of Gangster No. 1, but McGuigan wanted
to stay away from "this kind of Cockney, cheeky-chappie type of film and go
for something quite serious. I just said to the producer, 'If you want me to do
this movie, I'll do it, but it's not gonna be a comedy.'"
Gangster No. 1 is a long way from comedy. Bettany's character
is a horrific monster always scheming to cause maximum carnage. In the film's
most deranged sequence, the viewer is forced to witness all that he can do, not
from his perspective (à la Psycho) but from the perspective of his victim.
"This is a really important part of the film," says
McGuigan, "the part where people realize that something else is happening
other than him just killing somebody. We had to get into his head -- so how do
we do that? How are you gonna murder someone in a way that you haven't seen a
thousand times before?
"I thought that, rather than using his point of view of
the killing, it would be really interesting if he was actually killing us, the
people watching the movie. All through the piece, he stares at the audience.
This is to make you feel uncomfortable, to make you feel that this guy is an
absolute psycho and you wouldn't want to catch his eye."
The sight of a rabid Bettany in blood-soaked undergarments
makes a sharp contrast with the nattily attired gangsters the film first
introduces. Despite Gangster No. 1's loving recreation of Swinging London
styles, McGuigan turns out to be most interested in depicting the savagery
concealed in the '60s gangster stereotype.
McGuigan has a novel theory to why it remains a favorite
image in British pop culture. "I just did an interview on TV about gangster
movies," he says, "and they asked me why I thought gangster movies
were such a big thing in the U.K. I said that was true of England, not the U.K.,
because they don't have a culture they can hang their hat on in England.
"In Scotland we've got a really strong cultural identity
-- the kilts and Highland music and whateverr. The English have been too
preoccupied by raping other people's cultures to have their own. The gangster is
the only thing they can look at and say, 'That's what we're like. We are the
pinstripe suits and the good ties and the nice clothes.' There is something
there, some part of the cultural identity. Because everything else is so
fragmented, they want to hang on to this gangster thing."
Gangster No. 1's original writers, Scinto and Mello, disowned
the film after falling out with its producers, and McGuigan learned that even
they wanted to play at being tough guys. "They really are the most exciting
writers here in the U.K.," he says, "but they're assholes. They tried
to threaten me in a pub, telling me, 'If you do this film, we're gonna break
your legs' - that kind of thing. I said, 'The first rule of being a fucking
gangster is to never threaten somebody you don't know.' It's such nonsense. It's
all been a bit 'drama queen' dealing with those guys.
"But they are great writers - can't take that away from
them. They didn't want a credit on Gangster No. 1, though we offered it to them.
They didn't want it because they thought they were making a point. But they were
just being stupid, because it's a good movie."
© 6/21/01 The Eye
Archived 2001-08 Alex D. Thrawn for www.MalcolmMcDowell.net