How sad is this?

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

This movie is a sleek and tasty morsel of English gangsterism that only slightly spoils itself with unearned aspirations at being a morality tale. When it takes us inside the black, clawing mind of a beautiful young thug, it's almost captivating. When it takes that thug well into middle age and tries to use him as an example of being careful what you wish for, it's heavy handed and bull headed.The basic story is pretty simple. In 1968, a tow-headed tough (Paul Bettany) gets taken under the wing of a notorious English criminal named Freddie Mays (David Thewlis). The young gangster becomes part of Freddie's gang and enjoys the perks the English underworld of the late 60s had to offer. But while Freddie may be smart and tough and violent, his new recruit is something else all together. He's less a man and more a walking shark with a soul as dark and hard as a doll's eyes. The young gangster doesn't just want to be rich or powerful. He doesn't want to just take over Freddie's gang. He wants to become Freddie, to subsume him, to fill himself up with Freddie's worldly identity.The young gangster gets his chance and lives the life of his dreams for 30 years. But then the no-longer-young gangster (Malcolm McDowell) is confronted by his past and by what he's made of himself and his life. He is Gangster No. 1, trapped in an existence where that's important and tormented by a view of a larger, better world where it isn't.The stuff in this film with Paul Bettany is harsh and more than a little chilling. This is one of the better portraits of the blunt, selfish and somewhat stupid evil that makes up the gangster's character. These guys are not masterminds or super-villains. They are intense appetites, poor self-control and comprehensive self-absorption with no introspection. There's a sick fun to watching Bettany play a fledgling such creature, a little cancer that metastasizes through himself and those around him.Gangster No. 1 also looks really good with a quick pace and a strong focus to its story. Director Paul McGuigan confronts the audience with the abnormal nature of Bettany's character. He doesn't allow the viewer to look at him through a lens of escapism. McGuigan never lets you get comfortable with imaging yourself as the young gangster, no matter how sharply dressed or coolly powerful he may be.But whenever Bettany is replaced on screen by Malcolm McDowell, the whole production sputters. Firstly, you can get away with different actors playing a character at different ages, but not when you have other characters at different ages being played by the same actors. For example, when David Thewlis plays opposite Bettany's gangster and then has old-age makeup slapped on him to play opposite the same character now portrayed by McDowell, it looks inescapably silly. 60something Freddie Mays looks like 30something Freddie Mays with gray hair and wrinkles. Malcolm McDowell does not look like Paul Bettany in any but the most generalized sense. You could have had Morgan Freeman play the gangster in middle age and it would have only been slightly more distracting.The other problem with Gangster No. 1 is that when the gangster gets old, the story become all about how his life of greed and violence and decadence and material obsession has turned hollow and worthless and left him angry and empty and frustrated. But virtually nothing that happens in the gangster's young life establishes or foreshadows or sets up that little morality play. This movie is like watching a softcore porno that arbitrarily turns into a Christian diatribe on abstinence. It's all forced and fake and kind of puzzling.If you fancy violent tales about violent men, and don't mind if a capricious lecture on the downside of being a horrible person is injected into it, you'll relish watching this movie.

I loved this movie soooo much! I was first introduced two thirds into it and I was immediately ready to sit down and watch it at three in the morning staying up till five am. The way it is shot is like pure genius! There is a scene in it that is shot from the perspective of the person being murdered and I mean it is aw inspiring! Seriously if it weren't for the way this movie ended it it would have been a 10 on my voting. Point in fact though the ending isn't horrible it just leaves a little to be desired. NON-SPOILER ALERT about the ending, they use a different person for the main character as the older version, but everyone else plays themselves just with makeup....(Don't get me wrong the guy they got 'Malcolm McDowell' to play as the older gangster is the best narrator and therefore carries the movie, but it's just weird and very hard to over look) Not to mention Paul Bettany who is a genius in this movie as well! My god the man can play psycho! All and all a must watch and a pass on to any friend who is in the mood to see a great flick!!!!!

As I am generally quite easily pleased even by the most average of films, it takes a disaster of epic proportions to motivate me to comment on their faults at length. Here is an example.Being a fan of British cinema in general, I have found myself entertained by the glut of British gangster movies released in the late Nineties/ early noughties so I have to admit I was looking forward to a fun 90 minute distraction when I came across Gangster No. 1What we have here appears on the surface to be The Talented Mr Ripley meets The Krays, where by a cocky young crook stalks (for want of a better word) his classy mobster boss, destroys his relationship and generally tries to take over his life by using shall we say, less than ethical tactics. We flashback to London in the swinging sixties where we meet the unnamed Gangster 55, played in his youth by Bettany who displays rare but outstanding moments of cold detachment that stand above and beyond anything else in this film. Forward to 1999 and we meet the contemporary 55, who is now for some reason played by Malcolm McDowell giving a performance so poor and boring that his co stars seem visibly embarrassed. McGuigan over-directs to the point that he appears to be confusing himself, one scene portrays a brutal assault played out to lighthearted background music a la Resovoir Dogs displaying none of the panache and power of Tarantino's masterpiece. Even the novelty factor of seeing the scene from the victims POV appears tacked on when compared to the subsequent Cafe battering dished out in L4yer Cake which emulated it. A criminally underused Saffron Burrows joins what appears to be an excellent supporting cast, but even the core blimey guvnor genius of Kenneth Cranham and Jamie Forman cannot inject any life into what has to be one of the most lacklustre scripts of recent years:"You alright?" "Yeah." "Yeah?" "Yeah." "Yeah?"Utter rubbish

The Brits have always had the knack of making superb gangster films the along comes Gangster No 1 and destroys the fact. Whilst the majority of gangland stories have their fair share of colourful language and violence, this film went far beyond the boundaries of exceptable good taste. The entire film is splattered with both obscenities and blood but the script has to have been written by an illiterate with a limited vocabulary. Maybe that's what the film-makers wanted, who knows. There's nothing special within this film and as for hidden meanings, only those who think too hard might find 'a little something' that isn't there.