‘Gangs of London’ Review: Varieties of Violence - Wall Street Journal

‘Gangs of London’ Review: Varieties of Violence - Wall Street Journal

‘Gangs of London’ Review: Varieties of Violence - Wall Street Journal

Posted: 30 Sep 2020 12:28 PM PDT

Lucian Msamati, Valene Kane, Brian Vernel, Joe Cole, and Michelle Fairley in 'Gangs of London'

Photo: AMC/SKY
By John Anderson

As Tolstoy never quite put it, happy families are all alike; each unhappy crime family on television is unhappy in its own way. One reason the Wallace clan of the ferocious "Gangs of London" is unhappy is that de facto godfather Finn Wallace (Colm Meaney) has been shot in the face. Another reason: It was a case of mistaken identity, a motiveless crime, thus casting everyone in the Wallace empire under the bumbershoot of suspicion.

Gangs of London

Begins Thursday, AMC+

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A title like "Gangs of London" might suggest a steampunky romp through fetid Dickensian streets. But creators Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery want to put a new perspective on the English gangster drama, sometimes literally: The first scene provides an upside-down view of London as seen by some unfortunate hoodlum whom the vengeful, dead-eyed Sean Wallace (Joe Cole) is dangling from a rope, and is about to set on fire. What's happening under the Wallace regime occurs in the here and now, and is probably scarier for it: There's no romantic distance, no sentimentality, certainly not among Finn's survivors—his unreadable widow, Marian (Michelle Fairley), or his longtime partner Ed Dumani (Lucian Msamati). And it's also scary because of its virtuosic violence.

"Gangs of London" may, in fact, be the most violent show ever on TV. The fact that it's being presented on AMC+, the new premium subscription bundle from AMC Networks, makes it less likely that some precocious tot with a remote control will stumble onto, say, the meat-cleaver battle that is a highlight of the show's premiere. (The first three episodes will be made available Thursday; new episodes from the 10-part season will debut on subsequent Thursdays.) Older viewers will be taken aback, but perhaps fascinated as well—the reaction to on-screen violence is, after all, often knee-jerk and disregards the fact that mayhem can be entertaining and/or cathartic and when done well, as it is here, is an art form unto itself. What Messrs. Evans and Flannery do with their acrobatic, lethal combat suggests a Hong Kong master like Yuen Woo-ping, with a dash of David Cronenberg.

Violence is also as good a way as any of establishing character. What is evident after the startling bar brawl that concludes the first hour of the show is that the hero of the piece is not a Wallace or some drug trader or one of the itinerant Irish caravan dwellers who haunt the outskirts of the show. It's a low-level Wallace hireling named Elliot Finch (the charismatic Sope Dirisu). He never even met Finn Wallace, but he wades into a crowd of Albanian thugs suspected of killing him and lays most of them low. "What were there, six?" Sean asks him later, to which he says: "No, eight. But I had a dart…" The fight is, after all, in an English pub.

"Gangs of London" is also about the politics of crime and skulduggery as a family business; think "Succession" with guns and knives. The ports of the city are controlled by the Wallaces, and in the wake of Finn's murder they are shut down. None of the family's associates can move their product into town. Tensions are mounting. Ed knows it can't continue, but Sean, a Sonny Corleone without the charm, is so single-minded in his search for his father's killer that he endangers their entire operation. It takes its story very seriously, "Gangs" does, but it's also audacious enough to engender good will and enigmatic enough to keep one engrossed. Of course, when it comes to the violence, the bar has been set so high that one dreads where it can possibly go. But that's also part of the show's allure.

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