GANGS OF LONDON

★★★★

cinematic spin, such as Matthew Vaughn’s slick, subversive Layer Cake and Eran Creevy’s Welcome To The Punch, which cast London’s seedy underbelly in a Michael Mann-esque sheen, but it’s never really maintained the same allure as its American equivalent.

Enter Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery, the co-writing director/cinematographer team who so memorably ratcheted up the action bar with 2011’s The Raid. They are determined to give the Brit gangster scene a stylish, big-budget, no-holds-barred shake-up with this epic Sky/ HBO Cinemax co-production, whose title notably riffs on a major Scorsese picture (presumably because Once Upon A Time In London was already taken).

For the most part, it is archetypal material, though it looks far further afield than the red-bricked battlegrounds of the East End.

At the heart of Gangs Of London is the Wallace organisation, a Corleone-ish clan whose ruthless patriarch (played by an understandably but sadly rarely seen Colm Meaney) is the underworld’s kingpin, his offspring comprising a volatile heir, a flaky younger son and an alienated daughter. After years of peace between the capital’s various, nationally demarcated criminal factions (the Kurds, the Albanians, the Pakistanis, the Chinese, the Travellers), his sudden death threatens to spark a new war. It also creates fissures within his own organisation, primarily between his cool-headed consigliere Ed (Lucian

Msamati), who puts business before retribution, and number-one boy Sean (Joe Cole), whose keenness to spill blood covers some not-so-wellhidden insecurities.

Despite its modern London setting, this isn’t exactly break-the-mould stuff. In fact, woven in here is another familiar plot thread, which focuses on Wallace foot soldier Elliot, who is played with an affecting blend of sad-eyed tenderness and hard-knuckled brutality by Sope Dirisu. The way he throws himself into increasingly deadly situations to win his new young boss’ approval is most reminiscent of