The First Season of GANGS OF LONDON Gives Sadistic Action and Intense Drama in British Criminal Worl
In the first three minutes of the first episode, we see a person hanging from the top of a skyscraper. "Please, please, don't!" he shouted incessantly at the person standing over him. But his pleading cry was not heard, for the person standing above him doused the person tied under him with gasoline and lit the rope that binded his feet with fire. The louder the man screamed as the flames ignited him and the rope that tied his leg broke, causing him to fall several hundred meters below.
Those three minutes are one of the important points of the series made by The Raid and Apostle director Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery, because the scene shows that Gangs of London is a series that never wasted time for the ruthlessness, cruelty and brutality of his story. . Whether in spectacular combat action or in a story full of dark surprises in it, the story in this series never hesitates to show one's worst traits to achieve one's ambitions.
And that is what makes this series really interesting and always interesting in every nine episodes of hers, because here we are told of various kinds of characters at once, who of course have different but equal ambitions and goals. The person who stands and burns at the beginning of the episode is Sean Wallace (Joe Cole), the son of the strongest and most successful criminal in London, Finn Wallace (Colm Meaney). For 20 years Finn has controlled all sectors of black business and also the construction of skyscrapers in London, until one night when he was killed by a pair of two young people who were nobody and didn't even know that what he killed was Finn.
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The sudden death of Finn certainly sent a pretty quick and excited signal to not only the Wallace family, but also to all the business partners who had always transacted through Finn. Moreover, because he was killed by a young man who actually had nothing to do with Finn or his business, Sean had high distrust of all of his business partners, accusing them of having planned the murder. Put Sean, someone who is naive and quick to get angry, in the middle of a group of criminal syndicate leaders who have big ambitions to take advantage of Finn's death, and there are endless tragedies.
As the name suggests, Gangs of London is a series about various criminal syndicates in London. What makes each of these criminal organizations unique and also very different from the others is how each criminal organization consists of different races and ethnicities. Apart from Wallace and Dumani, the family who are the right hands for the Wallace Family, which is a British criminal group, we also see a criminal organization from Albania, Pakistan, Wales to Nigeria gathering in London to run a business.
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What I love about the narrative structure of this British series is how even though this story is centered in the middle of the Wallace Family, we never forget about other criminal organizations, with each episode always taking the time for the audience to get to know each character in it and what the problems and problems are. their past which made them do what they are doing now. This is what makes us always be able to put sympathy into the many diverse characters, so that their characters always feel alive and "useful" for the continuation of the story. There is no character that feels wasted in it, even though Gangs of London has lots of characters passing by at all times.
That's what always makes Gangs of London tense, because we don't know what will happen next. Will Lale (Narges Rashidi), a leader of a Kurdish criminal organization, run his business behind Sean? Will Luan (Orli Shuka), leader of an Albanian criminal organization and accused of Finn's murder, will continue doing business with Wallace or open up new business opportunities? Lots of possibilities will happen, and that is what keeps this series fresh in every narrative it takes without feeling boring or clichéd.
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In the midst of all the problems that continue to occur is Elliot (Sope Dirisu), Wallace's bouncer who is apparently an undercover cop who is building a case and gathering evidence to bring down and arrest Sean and all of his business partners. His character introductions were really cool, as he took the initiative to introduce himself to his boss and beat up a gang of Albanian gangs in a bar using only one dart in his hand to locate the driver who was driving with Finn the night he was murdered. Blood spurts, broken bones, Elliot is no ordinary bouncer and he steadily makes his name more audible, until finally reaching Sean who makes Elliot his right hand.
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Every scene in the fight here is not arbitrary just hitting and kicking without blood, but really brutal like the previous Gareth Evans film, with a level of sadness that might almost match The Raid . We see how a person's body can react with all the action that is extraordinarily brutal and terrible. Although not all episodes were directed by Gareth Evans, the traces were still felt in every fight, with all the hit scenes always presenting a stunning choreography and also unforgiving. In fact, the more sadistic the fight becomes, the more stunning the fight looks.
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And that's what I admire about Gangs of London . How this story can perfectly balance their intense drama with his agile and extremely violent action. There is no drama that feels dragged, there is no action that feels forced, the two are perfectly blended to become a story that really grips the audience in every episode. Every episode of hers, whether with all the loops in the story or with all the spectacular fighting action, always presents a very explosive surprise. It's not hard to say this is one of the best series of 2020.