#I am gangster movie review serial#

With his criminal empire potentially slipping away, Jang Dong-su (Lee) arguesįor peace and cooperation-until they no longer work.Įnsuing mayhem is indifferently staged, apart from Lee himself, who executes Restaurants, followed by full-scale onslaughts in nightclubs and warehouses. Gangland scenes are formulaic as well: standoffs between dons in offices and

Ignoring a superior who’s on the take, Tae works under the radar, flushing out informers by making a nuisance of himself (and ignoring his growing backlog of cases).

#I am gangster movie review serial#

Once he proves a serial killer is involved, Tae’s replaced on the case by a special task force. The “cop” storyline follows Jung Tae-seok ( a hothead convinced that recent murders are connected. But the burly, charismatic Lee almost singlehandedly lifts the film out of the ordinary. The second feature from director Lee Won-tae, who got his start in television, the movie feels like any other mainstream crime thriller. The movie pits a won’t-follow-the-rules cop and a besieged-on-all-sides crime boss against a serial killer who finds victims by crashing into their cars. Don Lee and Kim Moo-yulĭon Lee, also known as Ma Dong-seok, steals every one of his scenes in The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil, an entertaining if derivative genre piece opening June 7 from WellGo USA Entertainment. Another piece of work.Team up to hunt for a serial killer in a fun but predictable vehicle for South 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.