A Very British Gangster

Manchester is his own. Dominic Noonan is represented as the "owner" of Manchester in this convincing documentary. It is everything but Hollwood, as thats what it's not to be. He portrays the stereotypical British criminal, although in his sidekicks' own words "I wouldn't say we are criminals." 'A Very British Gangster' says everything that is needed to be known. Very British, very stereotypical British gangster like. Suited up, no matter how cheap they look, their gold chains and rings and just a simple run through of Dominic Noonan's life, exploiting all his plus and negatives, even if you find them all negative, they are all very interesting to find out about.

Recommend, in the eyes of a Media Studies Student.

Overly long and without much unifying message, A Very British Gangster will surely leave many scratching their heads. Americans usually have a entirely different view of what a "British Gangster" would be. These guys seem to be minor characters in a Guy Ritchie movie. Rather than wearing three piece suits and driving expensive cars, the Noonan family make their living exploiting the down trodden members of Manchester in their cheap clothes and fake gold jewelry.

We really don't get to see the true underbelly of what life is like as a gangster in Manchester. The gang spends its time posing on street corners, making idle threats and generally looking like a bunch of kids trying to emulate the real deal. But we do get a sense that there is much more below the surface. We never meet the real gangsters we expect to find but they seem to lurk in the corners the film doesn't explore. The Noonans seem to be putting on a show for the cameras, allowing only their teenage goons to be on camera and their operations limited to settling disputes between the locals. Dominic claims to have stolen millions of dollars, but the whole gang is still stuck in near poverty, living in small flats and proud of their meager possessions.

This movie is less a study on a British crime boss and more a look at the gritty reality of the poor urban centers of Britain. Places where small time crooks can still make money on petty crimes and instilling fear in the local community. The Noonans are playing a game that is getting increasingly harder to win at. Many of the kids have dreams to do something different with their lives. One wants to be an actor, another a singer, another just to escape Manchester. Unfortunately, the sad truth is most of the gang, including Noonan's son and God Son, are spiraling down the gutter without any hope or guidance that could help them become anything more than small times thieves; destined to spend most of their adult lives behind bars.

After just watching this very insightful documentary into one of Britains most infamous criminals, Dominick Noonan, I got to say I really did like it.

Dominick Noonan, born, bred and in his own words...will die in Manchester, has been running the city for years, spending more of his life behind bars than on the outside. He has a MASSIVE reputation, and rightfully so, we hear how and what he done to get his rep (to show whos the boss to a rival gang, he cuts a dog's head off and putting it on a pool table in a pub, now known as THE DOGS HEAD, then promptly says next time it will be a human's head)...but he actually comes across as quite a decent guy too...just don't get on the wrong side of him!

He does a lot for the community, offers services to rival the police(people actually get hold of him rather than the police to sort domestic problems i.e noisy neighbours, people who owe money etc, etc... because he is more likely to get the problem sorted with better results), as well as running his own security firm.

All credit to the the film-maker Donal Mcintyre, he follows Dominick around over a period of time, and we get to know a lot of his posse, mainly made up of teenage lads, but some of the questions he gets out of Dominick are unbelievable, anybody else would surely of had a cricket bat wrapped round their head! The documentary also involves Dominics' brother, who was a self-confessed ganglord, who was tragically murdered, and we see the unbelievable scenes where the majority of the city came to a complete standstill on the day of his funeral.

This is a REAL documentary..not a film, so don't expect FOOTBALL FACTORY or RISE OF THE FOOTSOLDIER, this is real, uncompromising footage of one of Britains most infamous gangsters.

It was not till my second viewing of this "documentary" that I discovered that it had been made for Channel 5. This should tell you everything you need - it is cheap, tacky and sensationalised.

The central figure, Dominic Noonan, is a nasty person. A really nasty person. The kind of person that should stay behind bars, the kind of person that should not be allowed to procreate. Throughout the film I could find no discerning characteristics in him. The film maker seemed intent on only showing/talking about the negative aspects (and doing so in a glorified manner). I suspect it is because this thug has no positive qualities at all.

But thats by the by, this is a documentary of sorts so what it shows is the real life thug and the life he leads. Right? Wrong. What we end up with is an extremely biased documentary that only skims the surface of what this moron and his low life scum family are really like. What we get is a piece of work very heavily weighted towards the superficial elements of the Noonans, their background, their extended families, the dreams and aspirations of the younger generation.

The deeper questions are never covered (although I will say that the scene where the brother is asked about any murders he may have committed is quite chilling) and we end up with a fluffy tale about a grown man hanging around with young boys.

The portrayal of this idiot as a gangster is untruthful. Sure, he may be in reality but for the purposes of this documentary we see nothing that can be attributed to a gangster lifestyle in any meaning of the phrase. What we are shown is a nasty, uneducated and extremely unlikeable person who lives off the fear he and his family have created in their own little bubble of a world for years.

In conclusion, therefore, the main problem with this film is not the central character/theme. It is not the lack of brain cells in his extended family. It is the fact that the film maker has focused on pallying up to his subjects and in doing so has lost any objectivity. It is as if he has spent a few weeks with some friends and recorded them playing up to him and the camera. For this reason alone I cannot consider this a true documentary, rather a puff piece made by someone who seems overly enamoured with his subject and the perceived life he leads.

I really don't know what was driving the director to turn a exceptionally interesting set of problems into an almost unwatchable and featherbrained piece of crap.

The gangsters shown to us are actually small time criminals, that come from the most knocked off part of society and never made it out of it. Don't expect anything streetwise either, these people are way beyond that. What you are going to hear are stunningly stupid statements that rather reflect pipe dreams than reality. Surprisingly that is exactly the point, that could have made this an exceptionally good and important documentary. A honest picture of how bad it can get in these so very "social" western societies. Where people are left and forgotten to literally rot in their own trash if they don't fit in.

Instead of showing us the decline of a city, the dark side of unlimited growth and wealth, Donald McIntyre tries to create a Hollywood-like gangster story which simply isn't there. The (over-) dramatization is comparable to such reality-shows as "cops" at best. The scenes and interviews are so awfully overdrawn - it is embarrassing. McIntyre doesn't make a single attempt to put things into perspective. At first you might think he cleverly uses Noonans narcissism to lure him out of cover. But when the first 30 minutes have past and Noonan is still talking trash while McIntyre keeps asking stupid questions you realize that it just won't gain any quality. Instead the pictures are underlined by folk and rock music combined with good but utterly unnecessary camera angles that (i'm afraid) intentionally glorify the whole habitus of these people. Especially the complex pan shots make the scenes look staged and false.

As a previous critic has put very well, you can not always tell the difference between a documentary and the poor copy of a guy-ritchie-film. The entire approach is so amazingly undifferentiated and cheesy, at times i really thought the creator is just making fun of me. McIntyre acts as if he were embedded in a major military operation somewhere in Afghanistan, giving insights that are usually hidden from the public. Yet he is just in the presence of probably the biggest losers England has to offer.

I rate this with two stars, just for some of the pictures shown. Definitely some disturbing and thought provoking stuff. If you make it that far into the movie.

Cheers