Quick recommendation: A return to the pleasures of the British gangster film. I think this is far superior to Guy Ritchie’s stuff, because both more brutal and more attentive to the consequences of brutality. The best antecedent, although some are naming The Long Good Friday (also great, but a different kind of flick), is Mike Hodges’ great Get Carter. Very entertaining.
I could barely sit through the smirky lengthy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But two other notable recent appearnces of the British gangster film: Sexy Beast (the main actor here Ray Winstone is also excellent in the only movie I know of directed by Gary Oldman, Nil by Mouth) and Gangster No. 1 which has a good ferocious performance by Malcolm McDowell and a sly one by David Thewlis (who is absolutely great in Naked)–after Gangster I couldn’t get Tony Bennett’s “The Good Life” out of my head for a month.
Additional pleasures to Sexy Beast:
– hearing again “Peaches on the beaches” by The Stranglers
– Ben Kingsley playing against type as an astonishingly menacing enforcer
– a small role for Ian McShane, just pre-Swerengen, where he manages to convey menace as effectively as Kingsley, but without the swagger.
It was my favorite movie of 2000, marred only by the occasional appearance of what appears to be a man dressed up as a giant rabbit.
More double plusses for Sexy Beast. And more jeers for anything (or anyone, come to think of it) that Guy Ritchie touches. He’s awful. Is there an American equivalent of him? Uwe Boll would be the German-video game adaptation-horror equivalent.
I read bad reviews of both Gangster No. 1 and Layer Cake, and they both mentioned a heavy Guy Ritchie stickiness on each film, which is why I skipped them. Though it’d be nice to see David Thewlis in something good. I’ve been watching some of the old TV movies by Mike Leigh, and they’ve made me want to go back and watch Naked again, but that’s quite a harrowing task.
And while we’re on the topic of these kinds of films, yet another recommendation for Croupier, if anyone here has yet to see it. And finally, my favorite British gangster movie since Get Carter, which isn’t British at all: Soderbergh’s The Limey, which has amazing dialogue and excellent performances, including the Terry Melcher-inspired Peter Fonda.
“What are we standing on?”
“Trust.”
And as with any soderbergh, it goes without saying that the editing is beyond exceptional, especially his use of old Terrance Stamp footage for flashbacks.
Yes to Sexy. I thought Gangster had great performances but was slow. Layer avoids almost all of Ritchie’s excesses and flaws.
And I almost mentioned The Limey, too–or Point Blank, a strong influence thereupon. Blank is all-American, but directed by John Boorman, and finally available on dvd. And it’s structural play with time is almost as much fun as Lee Marvin’s expressionless purposefulness. (There’s a great bit of editing where the slapping footfalls of Marvin down a long hall are heard over other scenes, forward and backward in time, marching….)
See Birth
So much is good about The Limey — and now I’ll have to see Point Blank to see the influences — that it’s hard to know where to start. To add to Fonda’s performance and the exceptional editing (both the flashbacks to Stamp as a young actor in Loach’s Old Cow, and repeated sequences of Stamp walking down a bright sunlit street or riding in a car with Guzman, or sitting on a plane) is the performance by Nicky Katt. I saw him in the remake of Insomnia, but I don’t know him from other stuff and he is so good in Limey that he ought be permanently employed.
I once read that Soderbergh excels in filming interiors, but Limey is full of great outdoors scenes of LA both at night and during harsh sunlight. Really great.
oh yeah: Nicky Katt! I agree. He’s got the briefest bit in Sin City, playing the punk who gets the arrow through the heart. But, yeah, he ought to be in everything. (He’s got a good small part in Collateral, too, but doesn’t get to do much there.)
And since we’re praising Fonda, a nod to Barry Newman, too. I remember being completely enamored of Vanishing Point as a kid, so it was cool to see him driving again…
To Point Blank and Get Carter–two superb “existential” gangster films (sorry to use that overdone term) where the purpose of the central figure is entirely obscure to him, though he must nevertheless fulfill it (much like graduate school perhaps though–unfortunately–school lacks the style and gunplay)–I want to add Bullitt, certainly a dated film but one whose performance by McQueen, mostly silent, is as implacable as Marvin and Caine’s. Also the film where “bullshit” has the most resonance. And, the great French film Le Samourai with Alain Delon, where the capability of genre to show “depth” while never breaking its surface is best demonstrated.
I also love The Limey–and I thought the casting of Barry Newman was an inside nod to Vanishing Point and the brief spate of “existential” (d’oh!) road movies (Two Lane Blacktop, The Getaway, etc.) Croupier is excellent too though I wish they had downplayed the “caper” angle a little bit at the end and stayed with the focus on the Clive Owen character.
I like Gangster No. 1 very much, despite the bad reviews. however, I guess your liking for it depends on your tolerance for a certain degree of scenery chewing by Malcolm McDowell. It strikes me as having very little to do with Guy Ritchie (by the way, is Snatch as bad as Lock, Stock…?) Did Swept Away destroy his career? jesus, what a movie to remake, it was bad enough in the original Lina Wertmuller version.
and yet another plug for two superb but overlooked relics from the 1970s, perfectly in tune with the movies we’ve been discussing here: The Driver and The Outside Man. Oh, and Night Moves. Is it possible that purposelessness was once a subject and method for mainstream American movies? now they have so much Purpose that you feel as if you’ve been hit by a truck when they’re over….
Soderbergh = inside? Hmm. I re-watched parts of Traffic recently and was re-amazed by the color schemes of the different sections. But by far the yellows of Tijuana – mostly outdoors – were great looking. Even inside with Del Toro talking to his missing partner’s wife, it’s the outside sun burning yellow that comes into the apartment through the window and screen door; looks great.
Los Feliz library has the Two-Lane Blacktop and will rent that soon. Also Vanishing Point, which is, I think, the best album by Primal Scream; the best mix of rock and brit-groove. Before that they were too hippy. After that, too angry. (why so angry?)
I clearly don’t have the memory for film that the rest of you have. I remember liking Snatch. Brad Pitt was hilarious. But that’s all I remember.
i enjoyed “snatch” as well. as did pete, as i recall. and he’s english, and so his opinions count more than ours.
however, i did not like “traffic”. preferred “erin brockovich” to it. third choppy sentence.
brand new bombay gangster movie: “sarkar”. sort of remake of “the godfather” by ram gopal varma (the guy who made “company” and many of the more interesting hindi films of the last few years). enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it to those who can find it on dvd/vcd–anytime from now (for illegal copies in indian groceries in the u.s) to a few months (for netflix).
Just finished Layer Cake and I liked it even it if was a bit exposition heavy (and midway through I had to put on the English subtitles). Ending was a bit much. Definitely better than Guy Ritchie, but I do prefer films like Sexy Beast, The Long Good Friday and the Croupier to this. Are unduly amounts of exposition a given in this genre?
saw Layer Cake last night and liked it (though, like frisoli, i feel that all movies are 20 mins too long). i really liked the colors. the fall-back color for interiors tends to be dark green, but this movie had really interesting interiors: intense sky-blue, beige and full of light (in the hotel-room scene), silver (in colm meaney’s inner sanctum and daniel craig’s kitchen), woody and soft (in a number of office scenes, including those with michael gambon). i liked the white motif in the duke scenes and the black motif in daniel craig’s scene. like frisoli (again), i’m a sucker for style, and i thought this movie had plenty of style. i liked that, inexplicably, daniel craig is always sitting behind desks when he meets with people, even though it is not clear where he is. everywhere he goes, he finds an elegant and authority-conferring desk to sit behind. and i like it very much when filmmakers spend time on their gangsters’ shoes. i know when a movie has worked his cool magic on me by the fact that, for a bit afterwards, i’m acutely aware of the noise my shoes make when hitting the floor. i liked that, like all cool gangsters, daniel craig likes his sleep. and i liked that michael gambon has an absurd tan. if you have seen michael gambon in the 1986 BBC miniseries The Singing Detective, you know what i mean when i say that it is hard not to pay an excessive amount of attention to his skin. if you haven’t seen it, you most assuredly should. The Singing Detective is also obsessed with shoes.
everthing considered, i think this is a movie to watch more for its excellent visuals than for its “existential” content or for plot twists, both of which work up to a point. i can’t wait to see daniel craig as james bond.
I also just saw this a few weeks ago, having stayed away earlier becuase of the director’s connection to the deplorable Guy Ritchie. (In League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, they’re talking about what kind of movie to make: “We’re not making a fucking heist film!”)
But I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, though I thought Gambon’s orange sheen and crazy hair was a little much. And I hated all 3 endings on the DVD. But yes, Gio, the style was quite good. I hadn’t picked up on the desks motif, but you’re spot on.
The Singing Detective is so good… And Gambon so good in it. I think Dennis Potter’s Lipstick On Your Collar was recently released on DVD. Also good stuff. Alas, those last two he did while dying: Karaoke and Cold Lazarus… I wasn’t thrilled with those. But Potter’s stuff in general uses the TV format to real advantage. I think The Sopranos more than anything on TV (that I’ve seen) has learned lessons from Dennis Potter.
Mark, great connection btwn Sopranos and Detective. I think Detective is not just the best television show I’ve ever seen, it’s among the best films I’ve ever seen.
Fucking european keyboard, or english, with @ sign in wrong place and a £ sign over the 3. who needs the £?