There's a lot of chat these days about the Kray twins. They were hard men, the fans will say, but fair. And above all they loved their mum. What tends to be less emphasised or sometimes glorified is that they were vicious criminals who stopped at nothing. Without the implacable efforts of a few good men things would have been a lot worse.
The film centres on the efforts of the good guys who brought them to their just desserts in an era when police work relied on brains, intuition and sweat, and the bad guys toted shotguns. Not a computer in sight, just mounds of paper. The director tries to portray an unromantic snapshot of the nasty side of life - with success. You won't find many flirtations with sixties nostalgia here. Not even a Mary Quant hairdo.
The villains have a suitably classic Jag while the detectives make do with a decent-looking Morris Traveller. But that's it for the props department. The entire location for the shoot appears to have been a derelict factory in the less-fashionable end of Pontefract. A framing shot or two of some of the more memorable bits of the East End would have been good. It could have been a bit more 'The Ipcress File'.
Stephen Moyer actually looks remarkably like the real-life Nipper Read, and carries the role well. Ronan Summers portrays the callous nature of the Kray twins with chutzpah. However little work seems to have been done to emphasise the differences in their character. Personally, I felt the psychological attack on Read by the twins to have been a little overplayed, and Read appears overwhelmed by it. I imagine that he would have experienced something closer to contempt at any such diatribe. Certainly, I doubt Read was the sometimes easily vulnerable shrinking violet of Moyer's character.
There is a dearth of films made on a nothing-budget by talented but impoverished film companies these days, and this is one of the better ones. By their nature, a focus on character is essential since the fairground-ride effects of most current headline productions are far beyond the ambitions of the not-yet notable director. Still, this sort of thing regularly attracts large audiences at the Globe theatre. And with that in mind, this script would transpose well to the stage. I liked it.
The film centres on the efforts of the good guys who brought them to their just desserts in an era when police work relied on brains, intuition and sweat, and the bad guys toted shotguns. Not a computer in sight, just mounds of paper. The director tries to portray an unromantic snapshot of the nasty side of life - with success. You won't find many flirtations with sixties nostalgia here. Not even a Mary Quant hairdo.
The villains have a suitably classic Jag while the detectives make do with a decent-looking Morris Traveller. But that's it for the props department. The entire location for the shoot appears to have been a derelict factory in the less-fashionable end of Pontefract. A framing shot or two of some of the more memorable bits of the East End would have been good. It could have been a bit more 'The Ipcress File'.
Stephen Moyer actually looks remarkably like the real-life Nipper Read, and carries the role well. Ronan Summers portrays the callous nature of the Kray twins with chutzpah. However little work seems to have been done to emphasise the differences in their character. Personally, I felt the psychological attack on Read by the twins to have been a little overplayed, and Read appears overwhelmed by it. I imagine that he would have experienced something closer to contempt at any such diatribe. Certainly, I doubt Read was the sometimes easily vulnerable shrinking violet of Moyer's character.
There is a dearth of films made on a nothing-budget by talented but impoverished film companies these days, and this is one of the better ones. By their nature, a focus on character is essential since the fairground-ride effects of most current headline productions are far beyond the ambitions of the not-yet notable director. Still, this sort of thing regularly attracts large audiences at the Globe theatre. And with that in mind, this script would transpose well to the stage. I liked it.