The DVD sleeve for "The Rise of the Krays" touts it as 'The Best British Gangster Film Ever Made', but that's a serious overstatement. Guy Ritchie did a much better job with "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". Those were fictional stories of course, but this one based on the real life Kray Brothers isn't nearly as compelling, and I was actually more enthralled by looking up a Wikipedia account of the brothers who ran an East London crime gang back in the Fifties and Sixties.
The film features it's share of bloody violence as befits the subject material, though it's usually Ronnie Kray (Simon Cotton) who doles out the punishment as opposed to more self controlled brother Reggie (Kevin Leslie). The brothers eventually come to blows when Reggie prefers to make nice with fellow Italian and Maltese mobsters by carving up sections of London each gang could control, rather than waste huge amounts of money and lives fighting each other. By this time, Ronnie is so paranoid and schizophrenic that his criminal life is interrupted by a stay at a mental asylum.
Without realizing there's a follow up film titled "The Fall of the Krays", I thought the picture did a disservice to it's viewers by not explaining what eventually happened with the Kray Brothers. The picture simply ends with Ronnie pondering his fate as lord and master of the London underworld. I imagine the sequel delves into their eventual arrest by the relentless detective, inspector Nipper Read (Danny Midwinter), but considering the way this was put together, I don't feel that compelled to bother with it. Of my current list of gangster films I've watched and reviewed here on IMDb, this one comes in number #75 out of 76 movies based on IMDb ranking order as I write this. That seems pretty lame for the best British gangster film ever made.
The film features it's share of bloody violence as befits the subject material, though it's usually Ronnie Kray (Simon Cotton) who doles out the punishment as opposed to more self controlled brother Reggie (Kevin Leslie). The brothers eventually come to blows when Reggie prefers to make nice with fellow Italian and Maltese mobsters by carving up sections of London each gang could control, rather than waste huge amounts of money and lives fighting each other. By this time, Ronnie is so paranoid and schizophrenic that his criminal life is interrupted by a stay at a mental asylum.
Without realizing there's a follow up film titled "The Fall of the Krays", I thought the picture did a disservice to it's viewers by not explaining what eventually happened with the Kray Brothers. The picture simply ends with Ronnie pondering his fate as lord and master of the London underworld. I imagine the sequel delves into their eventual arrest by the relentless detective, inspector Nipper Read (Danny Midwinter), but considering the way this was put together, I don't feel that compelled to bother with it. Of my current list of gangster films I've watched and reviewed here on IMDb, this one comes in number #75 out of 76 movies based on IMDb ranking order as I write this. That seems pretty lame for the best British gangster film ever made.