Reviewed by Adam Boult
Stars Les Falco, Bobby Reading, Jimmy Tibbs, Victor Dark, Mickey Gonella,
Mickey Goldtooth, Roy Shaw, Alan Mortlock, Danny Woollard, Matt Attrell | Written by Nicola Collins
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £12.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 85 minutes | Directed by Nicola Collins
When I was a teenager I had a friend, Graham, who was obsessed with gangsters - the British variety, as opposed to the vastly more glamorous Hollywood version. He was a particularly big fan of the Krays, and used to gleefully recite stories about Ronnie and Reggie's legendary “hardness” and various ultra-violent crimes they’d carried out in their heyday (most of which I’m sure Graham had either made up or wildly exaggerated for gruesome effect).
At the time I thought his interests were a little strange, very adolescent, and hopefully a phase he'd grow out of. However, the intervening years have shown he was far from alone: these days a short stroll around the true crime section of Waterstones reveals a massive public appetite for tales of East End hard men smacking each other about, bare knuckle boxers pounding each other to death, cheeky cockney rogues with amusing nicknames dissolving each other in baths of acid, etc etc. The End, a documentary by first-time filmmaker Nicola Collins, is sure to appeal to that same alarming section of the book-buying public, but will it also entice viewers with less of a keen interest in horrible violent men doing horrible violent things to each other?
Collins and her sister Teena, The End's producer, are daughters of one Les Falco, an East End hard man who, he says, saw crime as the obvious route to improving his life while growing up in extreme poverty in the years following the Second World War. “I thought of myself as like Robin Hood,” he says. “Everyone else thought I was a robbin’ bastard.” In The End, Falco and his friends give startlingly frank accounts of lives in which crime is a given, violence a routine occurrence, and the worst sin anyone is capable of is being a grass. This, admittedly, sounds like some macho bullshit from a Guy Ritchie movie, but it’s clear that the Lock Stock director is not much admired by these real-life gangsters, who sneer at his unrealistic, over-glamorised depictions of their world.
Shot in grainy black and white, The End’s interviewees are blunt and largely unapologetic about their pasts; horrific descriptions of attacks on enemies are delivered with smiles and laughs, and on occasion some of our featured crooks seem to check themselves to make sure they don’t give away any information that could still be of interest to the police. “I’m not proud of it,” is a phrase that crops up a lot, appending various criminal anecdotes, but no one seems particularly regretful about their actions either. Collins goes out of her way to portray her subjects with a degree of warmth, but given the stories they’ve got to tell it’s nigh on impossible to actually find them likable. 85 minutes in their company is more than enough; there's only so many gangster reminiscences one can listen to before things get grimly repetitive, and it's perhaps unsurprising that the best parts of The End are those that have nothing to do with criminality - far more interesting are the sections in which they reflect on how the East End has changed over the last 40 or 50 years, and how the world that shaped them no longer exists.
A stylish and confident piece of storytelling, The End is sure to find an audience. Whether it's for you largely depends on your taste for the subject matter, but even if you're not a frequent visitor to the true life crime section of Waterstones it could never-the-less be worth a look.
EXTRAS Director's commentary, theatrical trailer, gangster profiles, extended interviews.