Cruel Britannia: A closer look at Gangster No.1.

London 1999. In the shadow of the Millennium Dome, men with faces as rough as Bethnal Green tube station laugh and leer at the camera. These monsters in bow ties are grotesque; their mirth rains like rancid nails, their stories are tired and worn like old 78s. Smoke rises, expelled from their black lungs filling the boxing hall with violent nostalgia, sinister nonsense.

Tony Bennett’s “The Good Life” soars across the screen, its presence confirms the ill-gotten gains of these Baby Boomer gangsters. They are cuddly psychopaths, working-class darlings indulged by the post-modern “Lads’-Mags’ of the 1990s like “Loaded” and “FHM”; they could be loveable old Mad Frankie Fraser appearing on daytime television with Richard and Judy, or pulling teeth out with pliers for The Richardson Gang.

One of them is Malcolm McDowell. We remember him as Alex in “A Clockwork Orange” –  perhaps in a parallel film universe he grew up to be the 55-year-old sociopath dripping with menace, disfigured by a purple lens flare when his old rival Freddie Mays is mentioned. The shot is disarming; the smallest hint at the horrific madness that lies stuffed down the cracks of this East End rogue. The truth is hideous beyond belief.

Director Paul McGuigan cons us into believing that “Gangster No.1” is another crime flick like “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” the so called, “gangster light” sub genre, a term coined by the film academic Steve Chibnall. When McDowell’s nameless villain (Gangster 55 in the credits) puts his glass of champagne down near the urinals and accidentally urinates in it we think we’re in familiar territory.

“What do you take me for, a c**t?” The question is aimed firmly at the audience, the fourth wall shattered. This ageing wide-boy would never mix bubbles and piss. Surely we’re in Guy Ritchie country, style over substance? Think again. McGuigan is softening us up for a sucker punch, forcing us to question a genre that has grown flabby and out of shape like a journeyman fighter.

“Gangster No.1” is not just the nail-gun through the heart of films like “Snatch” and “Honest.” It is an allegorical schwerpunkt to the burgeoning celebrity bling culture of the late 90s and forewarns the disintegration of “Cool Britannia” and the New Labour ideal before 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq. If “Fight Club” is America’s watershed film pre “War on Terror” then “Gangster No.1” is Great Britain’s equivalent.

We flashback to 1968. Paul Bettany’s young Gangster hangs out in snooker hall. De-rigour for all aspiring villains to hit the big leagues. That’s how the Kray Twins got their break, that’s how Harold Shand in “The Long Good Friday” made his mark. No working-class drudgery for Gangster, no climbing the social classes one rung at a time for him. He wants to take the snakes out and fill his game with ladders. When Fat Charlie comes talent scouting for Freddie Mays, Gangster answers the call.

“Freddie Mays, The Butcher of Mayfair.” Young Gangster’s voiceover smacks of a teenage fan writing a love letter to their idol. He’s infatuated with the “legend,” he’s, “Drunk on the smell of Italian leather, arseholed on the smell of success.” Gangster is an East End Patrick Bateman obsessed with material wealth and external appearance; he’s metro sexual, a conspicuous consumer, David Beckham with a hatchet.

Bateman’s self analysis fits Gangster too well, “Although I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel my flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.” He may resemble Jack Carter from “Get Carter” in looks and dress sense, but as reprehensible as Carter was, at least he had some notion (however twisted) of family. Gangster is a shell, all greed and venom, a pod-person escaped from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” all traces of humanity erased, replaced with Macbeth’s hollow “vaulting ambition.”

Gangster is in love with Freddie Mays-or rather the idea of Freddie Mays. He doesn’t just want to be him, Gangster wants to possess him; tie pin here, a Janus reflection there, Gangster even pretends to be his mentor but can’t exude Freddie’s easy charm. He can’t see beyond the sharp suits or the Aston Martins. Gangster only respects extreme violence and Freddie’s rise to the top after killing, “A bent copper.”

Yet Freddie reveals himself as a cautious, charismatic leader, thoughtful, tolerant and even merciful. Dare one say human? Perhaps he is reticent to act in a gang war with Lennie Taylor because of his past. The closer Gangster gets to Freddie, the quicker the “legend” unravels. Gangster only sees things, so much meat to be hacked and chopped into bloody nightmares. Freddie sees people.

David Thewlis’ Freddie is full of contradictions. “When you work for me you do things my way. There’s no going behind my back. There’s no going out on your own and there’s no independent fucking thinking.” Yet Freddie’s is the first term Tony Blair of mob bosses. His gang is like a New Labour social experiment full of waifs and strays. His right hand man is the ageing Tommy; he has Jamaican muscle in Roland, indulges 3-time loser Eddie and allows his girlfriend Karen to influence his decisions. He even praises Gangster for being “inventive,” surely contradicting his own criminal code.

Freddie uses his “celebrity” status to better himself; he’s urbane, cultured, drinks wine, eats well and mixes with Arabs and Transvestites. Freddie has class and is classless, Blair’s early vision of Britain. When he introduces Gangster to Soho his protégé reverts to boorish behaviour to mask his petty working class prejudices. He’s a jealous lover, jilted on a date when Freddie asks for Karen and another hostess to join them to put Gangster at his ease. Freddie jokes, “A couple of blokes, on our own, drinking wine, a bit suspect innit?”

Karen is the catalyst. Intelligent, beautiful, loyal, she still has to prostitute herself to a gangster to succeed in 60s Swinging London. Gangster is outraged that his hero could be smitten over “just another skinny, fucking bird.” Saffron Burrows’ Karen sees through Gangster’s darkness, his misogyny, a mile off, “There’s something very ugly eating away inside of you.” Karen is Freddie’s weakness and Gangster’s excuse to bring his hero down with a Machiavellian strike of sickening cruelty.

If Freddie was Blair in his first term then Gangster is Blair in his second and third. Behind the polished image lies a committed killer, a Francis Bacon painting loaded with pop culture references, “I’m Superman, King fucking Kong.” Gangster ruthlessly cleanses Freddie’s old gang over the coming years, laying the foundation for a Thatcherite firm of ultra capitalists, dismantling any opposition with brute force and humiliation. Any semblance of family, of community is lost amongst the brutalist architecture that Gangster inhabits, a penthouse tower that cuts the sky like a concrete carving knife.

Like Blair in the twilight of his office Gangster is isolated, living in a time warp, his power slowly eroding as the past catches up with him. When Freddie finally confronts him after 30 years in prison, there is no brutal gunfight, no Jacobean revenge, just an, “Old man in a cheap suit.” Freddie destroys Gangster 55’s life simply by rejecting it, “I was vain. I was a prat. Handsome Freddie Mays, “Butcher of Mayfair.” What a load of old cobblers. Who’d want to be Freddie Mays?”

“Gangster No.1” vanquished the love affair with outdated villains like the Krays, revealing them for the psychopaths they really were. It showed the void of celebrity culture and the disastrous pursuit of its trappings paid for by cheap loans and equity release. It warned us of the inane worship of reality TV stars that would lead a generation believing they could have success without an honest days work. It warned us that New Labour had abandoned their principles to stay elected at any cost.