Gangster No. 1 (Paul McGuigan, 2000)

Anyone familiar with Monty Python’s Flying Circus will remember the ‘Piranha Brothers’.  Whilst many showbiz stars were pushing the horrendously stupid lie of the noble gangsters who loved their dear old mums, the Pythons undercut the myth with tales of men who were loved cos they ‘knew how to treat a female impersonator’ even if they were known to nail the odd head to the floor or pelvis to a cake stand and, with it’s shark like protagonist, Gangster No. 1 pulls a similar trick.

Played by Malcolm McDowell and Paul Bettany, Gangster (for no name is given) is a psychopath.  He is a seemingly emotionless killer with a yearning not only to be like his boss, Freddie Mays (Davis Thewlis), but to actually be him a’la Single White Female (1992) and, with this simple twist, this admission that the cheeky gentleman mobster is mere Freudian wish fulfilment, Gangster No. 1 pokes it’s head above the mass of blokey, ‘wotcha wotcha’, geezers and guns nonsense.

Oh, and Bettany’s performance really is something to behold, a masterclass in cold, dead-eyed menace that manages to make a clearly unsympathetic person utterly watch-able and again confronts us with the fact that we like bad things and there is no need to kid ourselves that these things are anything but.

Gangster No1 is available on DVD.

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