i have watch this movie four time and a it come with polarised recommendation . curate egg be the best that can be say about gangster no . 1 and and give the budget and actor and so on that damn with feint praise . around about the time this film be make and film about cockney geezer gangster be all the rage . some be really quite good ( lock stock and sexy beast and layer cake ) but many become parody of the genre and be that all too common thing the bad brit flick . gangster number 1 be more of the latter . on paper this cast must have look great . on celluloid and however it all come apart . for a start and malcolm mcdowell and wonderfully sinister a alex in a clockwork orange and can not do a cockney accent and his performance be as frightening a a flower show . the voice over use to set up the piece become vaguely comic and quickly irritate . with a script this weak and an accent this bad and why on earth parade the fact . all this accentuate the film central weakness . a truly creaky script . a world of lennies and eddy and tommys and freddies be just the start of a roster of every gangland cliché parade with tiresome inevitability . when actor the calibre of david thewlis and paul bettany look this corny and you know the problem behind the camera . director paul mcguigan be develop a knack of produce 2nd rate tv style movie . hopefully he will get it right one day but after this and the reckoning and now lucky number slevin and i wouldn not hold my breath . paul bettany make a fair fist of be scary but it require scene of sheer gore to get the point across . but the gore be just unpleasant and dissolve into patrick bateman without the laugh . in scorsese hand it might become terrifying and but mcguigan be no scorsese and or jonathan glazer for that matter . in this gangster world and nobody possess genuine menace in the same way ben kingsley and ian mcshane be scary in sexy beast and or even vinnie jones in lock stock . also and the supposedly stylish and rich freddie may wear the same suit all the way through . the gay undertone just add to the corniness of the whole thing . there be some good perfromances here . bettany be great in part and but the look at my eye thing become tedious . eddie marsen a eddie miller be terrific a be jamie foreman a lennie .