A Very British Gangster

How good does this sound?!? A good old fashioned tale of some hard bastard who most likely spends his life terrorising his surroundings and any camera crew crazy enough to get within ten feet of him, well yes, it sounds the goods but in reality, A Very British Gangster is actually a very disappointing documentary.

In fact you have to ask the question does this even fall under the documentary heading? The premise promised so much; based around Manchester crime icon Dominique Noonan and his family of no-goods and thugs. You would think once access had been negotiated you would point a couple of cameras at the lads and follow their every move, trying not to get in frame. However director, Donal MacIntyre has fumbled the production of this film badly investing in over-the-top cinematography and cheesy character glorifying editing techniques.

Surely the first thing you would want to explore with such intense characters is their humanity, and to a point MacIntyre does that. His study of Dominique Noonan’s close ties with family and his homosexuality are an unexpected facet to a thug tale such as this; however through the director's misguided stylistic choices the film loses any grit and reality, the elements which could have made this film great.

Obvious nods to Reservoir dogs and the like are just lazy, and they ultimately serve to hobble the film along with laborious shots that have obviously been heavily planned and most likely executed several times… hardly realistic.

A Very British Gangster is a watchable film and it’s obvious the Noonans are some very dangerous men who do very bad things, but we never really look at the trail of debris that their fearless swagger has left behind, and it's that horror that viewers would have most likely been interested in seeing.

MacIntyre seems to have been a little taken with Dominique and the Noonans. He seems caught up in their world and under the impression he’s been adopted as an honorary foot soldier. You can almost see his objectivity fall away as what could have been a great film slips through his fingers.