GANGS OF LONDON: Bloody! Bloody Spectacular!

In the series Gangs of London, the saying that you only look good with your family in photographs finds its reflection once again. There will always be an excuse in the form of private ambitions or money for love and devotion to give way to mutual rivalry.

Evening, a London housing estate. A luxury car pulls up to a building likely inhabited by the poorer part of society. The driver stays inside, while from the back seat steps out a well-dressed, older man. He is smiling, tense with anticipation for the upcoming meeting, as he has, as it will turn out later, arranged another rendezvous with his pregnant lover, with whom he plans to flee the country and live a peaceful life.

He approaches the apartment door, when suddenly a bullet pierces his body. He falls to the ground, dead. The sound of the gunshot heralds the end of the gangster empire founded by Finn Wallace. The criminal leaves behind a legacy difficult to bear, over which not only the abandoned family members will fight, but also other mafias interested in taking over the lucrative businesses.

Television London is a city divided between gangster enterprises that have turned the metropolis into a place for doing business worth billions of pounds. Some deal with smuggling drugs from the Middle East to Western Europe, others are responsible for distribution, while the Wallaces, along with the friendly Dumani family, are the glue responsible for keeping everyone in their designated places, as well as the brains of the operation, within which money laundering is carried out through various investments, for example, constructing glass skyscrapers in the city center.

However, when the oldest Wallace dies, a bloody slaughter begins. Anyone familiar with the filmography of Gareth Evans, the creator of the series and director of several episodes, knows very well what they are in for. The author of The Raid escalates the carnage episode by episode, following the search for the father’s murderers undertaken by one of his sons – Sean (Joe Cole). The young man does not understand that he is not ready yet, does not know all the mechanisms, does not grasp certain unwritten rules related to running such a complicated business.

The burden of inheritance falls on him, which he tries to bear, while at the same time seeking to deliver justice at any cost. He is ready for everything – he sets fire to one of the witnesses, murders all the inhabitants of a Roma camp where the perpetrator is supposedly to be found. Sean does not respond to the Dumanis’ warnings, disregards possible consequences, for him only revenge matters. Alongside these events, an important subplot unfolds, involving a police informant infiltrating the ranks of the gangsters.

Here is Elliot (Sope Dirisu) breaking into the degenerate world with momentum, repeatedly proving loyalty to his bosses, while in fact searching for evidence of their misdeeds. As is often the case in such stories, work is work, and heart is heart, so in the meantime he begins an affair with Shannon Dumani (Pippa Bennett-Warner), thus entangling himself in even greater trouble. 

Long takes showing blood splattering as bullets pierce bodies, the crack of breaking limbs, the screams of victims slashed by machetes – Evans and company deliver plenty of perverse delights to the audience, enhancing the fight scenes in every possible way. There is no sight the creators are afraid to show, as exemplified by a scene in which one of the shot characters pulls a large yellow worm out of their wound. It seems, however, that not always in the British series is the use of violence a key to portraying the corrupt world presented.

Sometimes it is simply about the thrill of shooting spectacular choreography, brawls, and shootouts to the death. The screenwriters constantly raise the stakes, shocking also with the courage with which they get rid of successive characters. When it seems that one gangster or another will be pulling the strings and responsible for the further development of the business, a surprising twist suddenly occurs. As in Game of Thrones, there are no sacred cows, everyone will sooner or later face death, because that is the nature of this world..  

Gangs of London works excellently as a casual, pulp-style story about unbridled ambitions, bloodlust, and the boundaries that man continually crosses in the name of family. It is also an interestingly portrayed generational conflict, in which the young refuse to accept the reality inherited from the fathers’ hands. It is worse when Evans tries to give some characters additional depth. This happens especially in the conflict between Lale (Narges Rashidi) and Asif (Asif Raza Mir), where references to political tensions in Kurdistan appear, but this has little significance, as these characters remain in the background for much of the story.

The same is true of Asif’s son running for the office of mayor of London – supposedly it is meant to show how deeply the gangsters have infiltrated state structures, but it is only an ornament, not an essential plot element providing the audience with additional information. Some of Evans’s ambitions are unnecessary here, as Gangs of London is not that kind of series. It is based on clearly outlined, often one-dimensional characters – and very well so. This is the kind of art that is meant to provide entertainment, nothing more.

Lately, television has been lacking such bloody action shows. The screenwriters o Gangs of London fill this void, offering a banal plot with revenge as the driving force of the action, but presenting it in such a spectacular way that each of the nine hour-long episodes is watched with curiosity, wondering what brutal thing Gareth Evans will come up with next that we have not yet seen in series.