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Dom Robinson reviews
Warner Vision
- Cert:
- Cat.no: 0927404442
- Running time: 119 minutes
- Year: 2001
- Pressing: 2001
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 24
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Stereo)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 1.78:1 (16:9)
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Biographies, Reggie Kray’s Funeral: Order of Service, The Kray Manor
Director:
- Aubrey Powell
Producer:
- Geoff Foulkes
Narrator
- Steven Berkoff
Music :
- Peter Dowland and Ross Knipe
# “Ding, Dong, the Bastard’s dead!” # Well, both of them are now.
Two of London’s most notorious gangsters are now pushing up daisies, where they belong, after carrying out a rein of terror culminating in the murder of Jack “The Hat” McVitie and George Cornell, which led to them both getting put away, only being let out in 1982 to attend their Mum’s funeral. Finally, Reggie Kray, gets the final word in this documentary because he was filmed 12 days before he passed away courtesy of cancer. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving soul(!)
The film features chat from many of their associates including Freddie Foreman, Tony Lambrianou and Chris Lambrianou, but it’s only really worth getting if you need to know the ins and outs of their lifestyle. If you’d rather see some escapist entertainment, watch The Krays, the feature film starring brothers Martin Kemp and Gary Kemp.
Naturally, some of the contributors in this programme uses colourful language, hence the 15-certificate.
Meet Reggie. He’s dead. Ha, ha.
The programme was made in 16:9 anamorphic widescreen as has been presented as such. Most of the time the picture looks great, but in a few interview shots they’ve used an intentional slight-haziness which has an adverse effect on the picture and was a bad idea. It doesn’t put you off the content though, if that’s your bag.
As for the sound, this is mainly a conversation piece. Dialogue is clear as a bell, but there’s nothing to test your speakers here so don’t be put off by the low score.
The brief extras consist of Biographies of famous thugs they hung around with including Freddie Foreman, Johnny Squib, plus detective Nipper Read who put them away, Reggie Kray’s Funeral: Order of Service, the list placed under a camera and The Kray Manor, a map of where they did their dastardly deeds. The press release described this as an “interactive map”, but it’s not at all. It’s a 2-minute piece of video with the camera scrolling down a map.
There are 24 chapters, breaking it up into one chapter per topic, the menus are static but the main one features the music from the programme and subtitles come in English.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
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.