Once Upon a Time in London

You know that feeling when you come into a movie late and only see the last 2/3rds of it and you never really can figure out what is going on? Well, that's what this is like right for the start. And it never gets better. Just one screen jump after another without context, without explanation. It was like watching a collection of gangster bloopers on YouTube.

A lot of badly filmed fist fights, dull dialogs, no connection between the scenes, poor director work and very average actors. If you miss it, you miss nothing.

Acting and photography in this flick is a very high standard. Dark but lovely and polished. All this counts for nothing though as it's let down by a story that's so disjointed you realise you stopped caring earlier on. The first part of the film I thought was a clever use of some cool cinematic style of weaving stories together. If I put the effort in to keep track, it would pay off as the film went on. But no. There's no story, just things that happen. It's full of pointless dead end scenes. Gangster one beats up gangster two who then beats up gangster one etc and on occasion a random moll appears and disappears. No character background or development either. They start off bad and, well, stay bad and carry on doing things that they did at the start of the film. Two hours....two hours of my life!! I suppose I'm optimistic and waited for that "ah, I get it" moment that was never going to come.

Rise of the Footsoldier in fancy dress. If you enjoyed the aforementioned film you may like this but i can only see it as a massive opportunity missed. A good (albeit largely typecast) bunch of actors staggering around slashing faces in a seemingly scattershot collection of short scenes, stretching a seriously threadbare story lacking in any depth, intrigue or class whatsoever. Avoid.