Brock Landers
09-11-2000, 01:58 PM
* spoilers *
This is just a brief overview I came up with after viewing this film again...one of my favorite gangster films...
If I were to compare this film to other films, I would say that it is a combination of three other films:
- David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers"
- "The Long Good Friday" - a seventies english gangster film starring Bob Hoskins.
- "White Heat" - James Cagney plays a mama's boy gangster, with an overbearing mother.
The direction by Peter Medak is very unique in its timing and scene presentation...avoiding an artsy feel that sometimes accompanies realistic filmmaking...
The two stars of the film are Ronnie and Reggie Kray (played by George and Martin Kemp from the eighties rock band "Spandau Ballet"). Ronnie and Reggie Kray were two real men from circa-1960's England who rose from squalor in post-war Britain to being extremely famous in England for becoming leaders in the Londen Crime Syndicate. Their underground activities as gangsters was covered up by their nightclubs and charitable contributions to the locals. Also, Ronnie was gay and deemed more intelligent than his brother, while Reggie was straight and more loyal to mum...the most interesting side story of the film, in my opinion, revolves the relationship between Reggie and his newlywed wife, causing her to commit suicide.
The film attempts to give us a background, to show us how they got to be who they were, what made them that way.
They were raised by women who taught them how weak and idiotic men are. Their mother (portrayed by Billie Whitelaw) truly wears the pants in the family, she is the backbone of the family. Billie Whitelaw really gives a powerhouse performance as the woman behind the boys. As a result, they have become mama's boys to say the least, and it is a really strange relationship...
Overall, the film doesn't have much to say concerning any great truth in life, but it gives a seemingly complex portrait of two brothers who were driven to greatness and failed because of it...
This is just a brief overview I came up with after viewing this film again...one of my favorite gangster films...
If I were to compare this film to other films, I would say that it is a combination of three other films:
- David Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers"
- "The Long Good Friday" - a seventies english gangster film starring Bob Hoskins.
- "White Heat" - James Cagney plays a mama's boy gangster, with an overbearing mother.
The direction by Peter Medak is very unique in its timing and scene presentation...avoiding an artsy feel that sometimes accompanies realistic filmmaking...
The two stars of the film are Ronnie and Reggie Kray (played by George and Martin Kemp from the eighties rock band "Spandau Ballet"). Ronnie and Reggie Kray were two real men from circa-1960's England who rose from squalor in post-war Britain to being extremely famous in England for becoming leaders in the Londen Crime Syndicate. Their underground activities as gangsters was covered up by their nightclubs and charitable contributions to the locals. Also, Ronnie was gay and deemed more intelligent than his brother, while Reggie was straight and more loyal to mum...the most interesting side story of the film, in my opinion, revolves the relationship between Reggie and his newlywed wife, causing her to commit suicide.
The film attempts to give us a background, to show us how they got to be who they were, what made them that way.
They were raised by women who taught them how weak and idiotic men are. Their mother (portrayed by Billie Whitelaw) truly wears the pants in the family, she is the backbone of the family. Billie Whitelaw really gives a powerhouse performance as the woman behind the boys. As a result, they have become mama's boys to say the least, and it is a really strange relationship...
Overall, the film doesn't have much to say concerning any great truth in life, but it gives a seemingly complex portrait of two brothers who were driven to greatness and failed because of it...