#I am gangster movie review series#

Blood In Blood Out (1993, Taylor Hackford) So, despite the economic growth felt during the 90s, there was a group of elements that might have led to the genre’s revival, which, of course, affected film as we shall see in this list.ġ5. The Los Angeles riots brought attention once more to police methods and organized crime, the hip-hop culture also emphasized the gang culture, the savings and loans crisis put under focus the corruption of figures and institutions connected with the nation’s law and order (The Keating Five). Video games started including new features and genres such as the first-person shooter. Pistone, “Casino” by Nicholas Pileggi, “The Last Don” by Mario Puzo). Books concentrated on organized crime became successful (“Donnie Brasco” by Joseph D. This trend might have been the result of perhaps a handful of events that happened in the end of the 1980s and during the 90s that had an impact on the United States, including the end of the Cold War.Īmerican television started to concentrate more on the production of crime dramas (“Law & Order”, “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “The Sopranos”, “Wiseguy”). Thus, the concept of organized crime within a family or a small circle, the values of tradition and above all loyalty were specially emphasized in the materials produced during the 90s. There was a restoration of the interest in the mafia, particularly the Italian mafia and New York City as the central setting for these stories. In the 1990s, there was a revival of the gangster genre, not only in film but also in the literary circle.

#I am gangster movie review series#

Another piece of work.This is the third installment on the series American Gangster Films (1970s – 1990s). The attack is seen through Lennie's point of view, as he fades in and out of consciousness. Then he unpacks a tool kit, including a hatchet, a hammer and a chisel. Chilling, how Young Gangster breaks down the door of Lennie's flat, shoots him in the knee, then carefully takes off his coat, shirt, tie and pants, because he doesn't want them bloodied in the events ahead. The sequence involving this murder is one of the most brutal and, it must be said, successfully filmed acts of violence I have seen. Then he kills Lennie, to frame Freddie for the murder. There has been a gangland feud between Freddie and a rival named Lennie Taylor ( Jamie Foreman), and when Young Gangster learns of a planned hit on Freddie and Karen, he goes to the location, stays in his car, and watches it like a drama. His face screws into a rictus of hate, he seems about to hit her, and then, by an act of will, he starts smiling-which is even more frightening. In one of the movie's strongest scenes, he confronts Karen, who not too subtly offers to help him find a girl, and then spits in his face.īettany's reaction shot is a piece of work.

When Freddie falls in love with the nightclub singer Karen ( Saffron Burrows), Young Gangster is consumed with jealousy. Young Gangster admires Freddie enormously, wants to be like him, and is probably half in love with him. The 1968 events have been called Shakespearean, which is fair enough, since just about everything is Shakespearean. Then he learns that Freddie is getting out of prison, his eyes narrow, and we go into the flashback. We see him with cronies at a private boxing club they're laughing uglies, drinking champagne, smoking cigars, recalling the violent days of their youth (significantly, their memories are starting to be unreliable). McDowell plays the character as a man who has lost all joy, retaining only venom. The movie, directed by Paul McGuigan, begins in 1999, with Young Gangster grown middle-aged and cold-eyed. One day he summons Young Gangster, tosses him a roll of bills, hires him and seals his own fate. 1,' the crime family is led by Freddie Mays ( David Thewlis), who in 1968 is a young, sleek, expensively groomed hood who runs a nightclub and surrounds himself with hard men he's known as the Butcher of Mayfair. It isn't based on their lives or deeds, but on the aura of evil they so successfully projected they often got their way without violence, because they seemed so capable of it. The movie is inspired, as all modern London gangster movies are inspired, by the notorious Kray brothers. Another connection: The movie contains a beating of startling brutality, scored by a pop song played at top volume. Paul Bettany, who plays Young Gangster, is often photographed with his eyes glaring up from beneath lowered brows, which was the signature look Stanley Kubrick gave Alex. 1.' The movie encourages that connection by casting Malcolm McDowell, the original Alex, as the character grown old. If Alex DeLarge of ' A Clockwork Orange' had become a London gangster, he might have turned out like the hero of 'Gangster No.