There are two
main characters in the documentary
A Very British
Gangster
: Dominic Noonan, and Manchester. The former is
the charismatic head of the Noonan crime family, gay,
bald as a bullet, with a rap sheet that includes $8
million in heists and bank robberies and half a
lifetime spent in prison. The latter is Dominic's
place of operations, a rough-and-tumble community
whose people treat Dom as their own personal
godfather--trusting him more than they do the ineffectual
police force and the legal system that can't seem to
make a charge against the man stick (earning him the
appropriate nickname "Teflon Dom").
Dominic is a
charismatic, audacious man, supposedly reformed (he is
attempting to start a security business) but has a twinkle
in his eyes as he discusses his past crimes, as well
as those he is "allegedly" committing in
the present day. This is a man who was broken out of prison
to help his family with a pair of same day bank heists
("No one had attempted a double before,"
he explains), then promptly returned to jail after
pulling off the first one. He's also a man who
realized his homosexuality at an early age, which
still didn't prepare him for the horrors of a
rough boarding school where he was raped and passed around
daily by older boys. When Dominic tells us that he caught up
to all those boys as young men and dealt with them in
ways you wouldn't wish on anyone, you believe
him.
Part of
Dominic's skill is his savvy for myth-making, a
quality that the film both recognizes and rewards in
spades. He and his men wear suits and ties when
strolling Manchester, and the film supplies the
Reservoir
Dogs
slow-mo - as well as the Dick Dale music cue
from
Pulp Fiction
wailing in the background.
His men respect Dominic, are blithe about his
sexuality, and are frankly more interested in acting and
posing than committing crimes. One boasts about appearing in
an ad with David Beckham, another is a singer aspiring
to the British reality competition
The
X-Factor
. It's the latter, Dominic's
nephew Sean, who gets off the movie's best
line: honing his craft, he says, "I sing at
weddings, funerals, acquittals...mostly
acquittals."
Of course,
it's through these young thugs, who look up to their
elders like Dom but say things like, "They did
what they did to survive. We do it for a rush,"
that you're reminded of the man - and the
family's - terrible influence. Dominic
is a torturer, an enforcer, savvy enough never to
dirty his own hands but complicit nonetheless. For all the
times the film seems to be in his pocket, and all
there is to like about Dominic, the director keeps
coming back to that. It's no surprise to learn
that his mother burned down their home in an effort to move
up the housing list, or that a relative in debt
ineptly robs a post office because he can't
conceive of any other way to pay his loans. Crime may
pay dividends, but here, it exacts an equal cost through
every generation.
