Once Upon a Time in London | Little White Lies

Once Upon a Time in London

19 Apr 2019 / Released: 19 Apr 2019

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Simon Rumley

Starring Holly Earl, Leo Gregory, and Terry Stone

Five people standing in a dimly lit room, dressed in 1940s-style clothing. Two women wearing red and grey, three men wearing suits. Warm tones and shadows create a moody, vintage atmosphere.
Five people standing in a dimly lit room, dressed in 1940s-style clothing. Two women wearing red and grey, three men wearing suits. Warm tones and shadows create a moody, vintage atmosphere.
3

Anticipation.

Genre-hopping director Simon Rumley turns his hand to the gangster epic.

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Enjoyment.

The intentions are admirable, but the final product is a bit of a repetitious drag.

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In Retrospect.

A classy step up from your garden variety slab of geezer porn.

Simon Rumley’s post­war gang­ster flick goes out of its way to dero­man­ti­cise its deplorable subjects.

The 2018 film Got­ti, about the life New York mafia don John Got­ti, gained a ele­ment of noto­ri­ety for two rea­sons: one, it was objec­tive­ly awful from a technical/​narrative van­tage; and two, it show­cased an icky love-in between mak­er and sub­ject, oper­at­ing as a sniv­el­ling apolo­gia for Gotti’s copi­ous transgressions.

Once Upon a Time in Lon­don, by the indus­tri­ous British writer/​director Simon Rum­ley, is a gang­ster saga with a dif­fer­ence, in that it goes out of its way to deglam­ourise the lives of its toer­ag pro­tag­o­nists – chis­ellers, extorters and degen­er­ates to a man.

At the cen­tre of the sto­ry are Leo Gregory’s vague­ly rep­til­ian con­fi­dence man, Bil­ly Hill, and Ter­ry Stone’s Jack Spot” Com­er, two East End wide­boys with rack­ets extend­ing from ille­gal gam­bling con­ces­sions at horse rac­ing tracks, to gar­den vari­ety hold-ups and heists. While spend­ing some time at Her Majesty’ Plea­sure, Bil­ly writes to Spot ask­ing to run with him, but egos swift­ly clash and the pair soon find them­selves at log­ger­heads over hench­man alle­giances and territory.

It’s a relent­less­ly dis­mal film, whose dim­ly lit inte­ri­ors ampli­fy an over­all sense of encroach­ing doom. You’re nev­er asked to sym­pa­thise with the char­ac­ters, whose chron­ic immoral­i­ty is parad­ed like a badge of honour.

Two serious-looking middle-aged men in suits, standing in a room with a painting on the wall.

Despite Rumley’s admirable remove from the dodgy deeds his char­ac­ters, the film itself is some­thing of a chore. Every oth­er scene involves some gurn­ing hood enter­ing into a booz­er, ini­tial­ly met with faux cor­dial­i­ty before being pub­licly nob­bled and, more often than not, hav­ing his face sliced up with a razor.

It’s hard to real­ly care who did what to who – it plays like a drea­ry soap opera in which these suit­ed-and-boot­ed street toughs switch sides with glee aban­don, and their cock­sure attempts at top­pling the gang­ster brass sel­dom go as planned.

Rumley’s fideli­ty to messy cul­tur­al his­to­ry means that there isn’t real­ly a sat­is­fy­ing arc or sin­gle dra­mat­ic focal point, so instead we have dron­ing, rep­e­ti­tious scenes of awful men caress­ing their wads of filthy lucre, or see­ing who can express their anger in the most vis­cer­al (and audi­ble) way possible.

It’s film who for peo­ple who like their true crime fic­tion with none of the fun­ny, fruity stuff, but is also unafraid to call out these men as self-mythol­o­gis­ing char­la­tans rather than cheeky folk heroes who were good boys really.

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