I am not surprised that the two previous reviews were raves for this little film, but it doesn't increase my faith in humanity that that should be the case. This is a film about a bunch of old, flabby, a-moral men all from the same section of East London, the poor side of town, and how they used robbery, murder, and extortion to fund their lives, allowing the director to go to film school, among other things. Right away you knew this was going to be a film about granting these men the right to justify their "way of life" when one of the interviewees said that 90% of people in the East End have done something illegal (by this I took it to mean, robbery, violence, etc., not stealing candy from the local store when they were 9.) So, everyone does it, I guess, and that makes it ok that these men have used violence and intimidation to make their way for their entire lives, because, hey, they have a code, one even considered himself a Robin Hood of his community, and that makes everything ok. I found the look of the pompous father of the director in his faux finery with the self-conscious smirk on his face as he tells about their "code of honour", and all the praise he gets from the other thugs for being a "good mate", to be laughable. The other reviewers call them, "hard men" and assure you that they are "tough", but all this film showed me was a bunch of old farts decaying in their recliners reminiscing about their past enjoyable dirty deeds as filmed by the adoring daughter of one of the most reprehensible. Yes, in a way they are similar to the Sopranos, but the characters of that fiction were not admirable, they were selfish, self-aggrandizing, violent men who only cared about themselves and that is just what this film shows is the case for these real-life aging criminals.
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Really interesting read. You make your case very convincingly, but I'd appreciate a bit more objective information about the actual film in addition to your opinions about the moral state of it's characters. Cheers Tom
lillamarta 29.10.2009 12:30
Interesting point, thanks for sharing. I don't think I'll watch this now.
![The End - Confessions Of A Cockney Gangster Dvd [2008]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/127798738.jpg "The End - Confessions Of A Cockney Gangster Dvd [2008]")
Oct 28th, 2009
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