I saw this movie to see Paul Bettany once again. I enjoyed his performances in <A Beautiful Mind> and <A Knight's Tale>, and wanted to see him in something heavier. Gangster No 1 seemed like the ideal role to see how he'd fare.
He looks great decked out in Saville Row's finery, and has an unnerving composure which suits the role. The crude language seems more natural coming from him than from McDowell's older Gangster, or Thewlin's Mays. But the scenes in which he is supposed to be shooting daggers with his gaze at Karen, his rival for Mays' affection, seem comical and remind me of all the menace my five-year-old can muster in his stares.
There is much lifted from other films, but McGuigan chooses his source material well. The <Reservoir Dogs> inspired the bubbly soundtrack to Lenny Taylor's goring, while <American Psycho> inspired the methodical disrobing and laying out of goring implements in that scene. <Get Shorty>'s Travolta gets the "Look into my eyes" thing right: it's cool apathy we're supposed to see, not Bettany's hammed-up intensity. <Good Fellas> inspires the "Business was never better" sequence, though McGuigan's lacks any significant depth, catching up on three decades in three minutes.
Some original stuff too: While a gangster falls for the 'Bird' in this film, as in <Bugsy> or <Billy Bathgate>, it is not Mays' undoing, it is what saves him. The first person perspective on Taylor's goring works well, especially with fades in and out of consciousness. The jarring flash-forwards to Gangster's fierce attacks also work well. And I have never seen the c***-word used more liberally.
What McGuigan, Bettany and McDowell do especially well is to reveal the emptiness of Gangster's relentlessly evil lifestyle. His disloyalty, jealousy, cruelty, vanity, and his hunger for power leave him paranoid, unloved, and suicidal. His touchstones of power and invulnerability---Superman and King Kong---are not human, perhaps showing how dehumanizing such physical invulnerability can be. But he remains vulnerable emotionally, and relies on bullying an old mate in Mays' crew, Mays' girlfriend, and Mays himself to stoke his fragile ego.
A movie with some substance and style, but no virtuosos in this one.
6 of 10
He looks great decked out in Saville Row's finery, and has an unnerving composure which suits the role. The crude language seems more natural coming from him than from McDowell's older Gangster, or Thewlin's Mays. But the scenes in which he is supposed to be shooting daggers with his gaze at Karen, his rival for Mays' affection, seem comical and remind me of all the menace my five-year-old can muster in his stares.
There is much lifted from other films, but McGuigan chooses his source material well. The <Reservoir Dogs> inspired the bubbly soundtrack to Lenny Taylor's goring, while <American Psycho> inspired the methodical disrobing and laying out of goring implements in that scene. <Get Shorty>'s Travolta gets the "Look into my eyes" thing right: it's cool apathy we're supposed to see, not Bettany's hammed-up intensity. <Good Fellas> inspires the "Business was never better" sequence, though McGuigan's lacks any significant depth, catching up on three decades in three minutes.
Some original stuff too: While a gangster falls for the 'Bird' in this film, as in <Bugsy> or <Billy Bathgate>, it is not Mays' undoing, it is what saves him. The first person perspective on Taylor's goring works well, especially with fades in and out of consciousness. The jarring flash-forwards to Gangster's fierce attacks also work well. And I have never seen the c***-word used more liberally.
What McGuigan, Bettany and McDowell do especially well is to reveal the emptiness of Gangster's relentlessly evil lifestyle. His disloyalty, jealousy, cruelty, vanity, and his hunger for power leave him paranoid, unloved, and suicidal. His touchstones of power and invulnerability---Superman and King Kong---are not human, perhaps showing how dehumanizing such physical invulnerability can be. But he remains vulnerable emotionally, and relies on bullying an old mate in Mays' crew, Mays' girlfriend, and Mays himself to stoke his fragile ego.
A movie with some substance and style, but no virtuosos in this one.
6 of 10