Once Upon a Time in London

Billy Hill is a forgotten legend. This film doesn't do him justice. His achievements as a gangster were unsurpassed. Post office robbery, gold bullion robbery diamond mining in SA. Plus he was one that got out at the right time. Film doesn't go deep enough. Just to much knifing and fighting. Billy, Jack and Albert were intelligent crooks. That used their environment to earn. Billy Hill book is a lot better than this bubble gum.

Obvious low budget, poorly edited and dis- jointed. If you take the violence out there's nothing else to see.

Terry Stone was as reliable as ever but sorry this Wasn't even average.

IMDB is sadly becoming known for fake ratings. This film is one big bag of gangster film cliches from one scene to the next. It lacks a compelling story (which is a shame considering it's based on real gangsters) and I could care less about the main characters. Don't waste your time with this. Stick to football hooligan or Guy Ritchie flicks if you want to see a halfway entertaining film about English gangsters.

This movie was very hard to follow. The way it is put together lacks structure and continuity. It is often hard to tell what is going on and why, especially when the scenes change. There's no narration or sense of coherence tying the story together. One group is supposed to be jewish and one italian, but it is confusing as to who is who. And there is no sense of who the main character is supposed to be, or character development for any of them, which leaves you not only not feeling like you know who any of the characters are, but not caring about them. The story telling is just completely off and lacking. After less than 40 minutes I didn't see the point in continuing to watch it.

Acting and photography in this flick is a very high standard. Dark but lovely and polished. All this counts for nothing though as it's let down by a story that's so disjointed you realise you stopped caring earlier on. The first part of the film I thought was a clever use of some cool cinematic style of weaving stories together. If I put the effort in to keep track, it would pay off as the film went on. But no. There's no story, just things that happen. It's full of pointless dead end scenes. Gangster one beats up gangster two who then beats up gangster one etc and on occasion a random moll appears and disappears. No character background or development either. They start off bad and, well, stay bad and carry on doing things that they did at the start of the film. Two hours....two hours of my life!! I suppose I'm optimistic and waited for that "ah, I get it" moment that was never going to come.