A Very British Gangster

To be fair after watching this for about 20 minutes I thought this was a David Brent, Office type spoof documentary about someone believing they were a gangster. One of the most cringe-worthy things I have ever seen, a bloke living in a terraced house in Manchester,driving a clapped out Volvo with a posse of 17 year old boys in TK Max suits parading behind him. The only reason to watch this is for a good laugh at an individual who takes himself seriously where viewers wouldn't in any sense of the word and seems to believe he really is some crime lord. The more this (mock) documentary goes on the more you find yourself just wondering what the film makers are seriously thinking...are they taking the pi55 and mocking this individual (my guess is yes) or making a genuine insight? Ricky Gervais has nothing on this fella

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.

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

This movie wants the crime boss whoever to be some mythic figure, when he's just top-punk. No insights are made about the nature of crime or poverty. Songs are used over and over again to attempt to make you feel tough when seeing these clownish buffoons. Then they want your sympathy when a man who cannot keep a straight face when asked if murder is wrong, dies.The tone taken is trying to make you look up to this guy when he is just a stupid man hungry for power. I've become very agitated at this documentary and although in some parts, glimpses of the horror this man created, it plays more like a Wikipedia article where entire paragraphs are copied from a biased personal web-page.

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.