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Gangs Of London starts upside down… no, they’ve not done something wrong with the camera, but a man is being dangled from a building that way, and has some explaining to do. His answers will depend on whether he lives much longer.
Will it involve simply cutting the rope? No, the man in control has much bigger fish to fry…
Flash back one week earlier, as we look to see what put him in that position. and uncover a situation for young lads getting out of control.
Colm Meaney plays Colm Meaney (well, his character is Finn Wallace), but it’s in the trailer that he won’t be doing so for too much longer, since after 20 years as the most powerful criminal in London, someone has ordered a hit on the man. But who? That’s what his son, Sean (Joe Cole), wants to discover, and as he tries to take his father’s place, he’ll play detective with the help of Ed Dumani (Lucian Msamati – Kiri), and everyone else below in the Dumani family.
Along the way, we see drugs are abound, plus we learn how Finn worked together with Ed Dumani because they met in a time of ‘closed doors’ due to seeing the signs labelled “No Blacks. No Irish.”
However, while this tries to be like The Godfather, and the opening feature-length episode does rather go on – as it’s around two hours including adverts, it does have a great fight scene in the middle – after everyone stops being ‘hard as nails’- where you can really feel the punches and bone breaks.
And (avoiding spoilers in who’s saying what), when one man goes to rescue another man and is quizzed on the number of baddies he was up againstL
- Man 1: “I’m the one who found him.”
Man 2: “And you did all of that on your own? What was it… six of them?”
Man 1: “No, eight… but I had a dart…” (and you’ll see along the way what that man can do with a dart)
That did make laugh.
On the plus side, there are a few great scenes in this and some moments that are pretty shocking. However, as good as it could be at times, I can’t escape the fact that it did drag at others and needs some tightening up. Also, I recommend you put the subtitles on, since there’s a lot of mumbling in this, and the preview I saw of this didn’t have subtitles.
Gangs Of London begins on Sky Atlantic tomorrow night at 9pm. All episodes will be available on demand at this time. The series is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD, ahead of its release on July 27th.
Episode 1 Score: 6.5/10
Director: Gareth Evans
Producer: Hugh Warren
Writers/Creators: Gareth Evans, Matt Flannery
Music: Aria Prayogi, Fajar Yuskemal
Cast:
Sean Wallace: Joe Cole
Elliot Finch: Sope Dirisu
Finn Wallace: Colm Meaney
Alexander Dumani: Paapa Essiedu
Marian Wallace: Michelle Fairley
Kinney Edwards: Mark Lewis Jones
Ed Dumani: Lucian Msamati
Vicky: Jing Lusi
Jack: Emmett J Scanlan
Zac: Jack Donoghue
Patrick: Garmon Rhys
Darren Edwards: Aled AP Steffan
Ioan: Darren Evans
Mark: Adrian Bower
Shannon Dumani: Pippa Bennett-Warner
Danny Dumani: Taye Matthew
Hekar: Askel Ustun
Wong: Kwong Loke
Lale: Narges Rashidi
Molotok: Constantine Gregory
Nasir Afridi: Parth Thakerar
Billy Wallace: Brian Vernel
Kwame: Edward Apeagyei
Jacqueline Robinson: Valene Kane
Jim: David Bradley
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.