WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

radhrh Its very rare that I choose to stop watching a movie once I have invested a little time in it. However this is one of those occasions when I just couldn't face another half hour of the rubbish being served up to me as a serious documentary.Domonic Noonan is a failed gangster from Manchester. He has spent a total of 27 years in prison and has nothing to show for it, his family still lives in the same slum of a council estate. He surrounds himself with young, stupid thugs who stand around uncomfortably in ill fitting suits clearly being worn for the first time. He gives it the large one playing the part of a big time hoodlum he clearly isn't and then expects us to believe the story of sexual abuse he suffered as a child, as if that was some kind of justification for his wasted life. He even goes onto say that said abuse was responsible for making him gay! That should have been when I hit the eject button, but wasn't.I checked out when Noonan attempts to give himself more "legitamacy" by linking his dead brother, another failed gangster, and by extension himself with the IRA bombing in Manchester of June 1996 when 212 people were injured.What sort of an idiot gives a platform to this kind of self deluded fantasist without any balancing comment? More frightening, what sort of idiot will watch it?

DonKowalski I really don't know what was driving the director to turn a exceptionally interesting set of problems into an almost unwatchable and featherbrained piece of crap.The gangsters shown to us are actually small time criminals, that come from the most knocked off part of society and never made it out of it. Don't expect anything streetwise either, these people are way beyond that. What you are going to hear are stunningly stupid statements that rather reflect pipe dreams than reality. Surprisingly that is exactly the point, that could have made this an exceptionally good and important documentary. A honest picture of how bad it can get in these so very "social" western societies. Where people are left and forgotten to literally rot in their own trash if they don't fit in.Instead of showing us the decline of a city, the dark side of unlimited growth and wealth, Donald McIntyre tries to create a Hollywood-like gangster story which simply isn't there. The (over-) dramatization is comparable to such reality-shows as "cops" at best. The scenes and interviews are so awfully overdrawn - it is embarrassing. McIntyre doesn't make a single attempt to put things into perspective. At first you might think he cleverly uses Noonans narcissism to lure him out of cover. But when the first 30 minutes have past and Noonan is still talking trash while McIntyre keeps asking stupid questions you realize that it just won't gain any quality. Instead the pictures are underlined by folk and rock music combined with good but utterly unnecessary camera angles that (i'm afraid) intentionally glorify the whole habitus of these people. Especially the complex pan shots make the scenes look staged and false.As a previous critic has put very well, you can not always tell the difference between a documentary and the poor copy of a guy-ritchie-film. The entire approach is so amazingly undifferentiated and cheesy, at times i really thought the creator is just making fun of me. McIntyre acts as if he were embedded in a major military operation somewhere in Afghanistan, giving insights that are usually hidden from the public. Yet he is just in the presence of probably the biggest losers England has to offer.I rate this with two stars, just for some of the pictures shown. Definitely some disturbing and thought provoking stuff. If you make it that far into the movie.Cheers

dominicpearson It was not till my second viewing of this "documentary" that I discovered that it had been made for Channel 5. This should tell you everything you need - it is cheap, tacky and sensationalised.The central figure, Dominic Noonan, is a nasty person. A really nasty person. The kind of person that should stay behind bars, the kind of person that should not be allowed to procreate. Throughout the film I could find no discerning characteristics in him. The film maker seemed intent on only showing/talking about the negative aspects (and doing so in a glorified manner). I suspect it is because this thug has no positive qualities at all.But thats by the by, this is a documentary of sorts so what it shows is the real life thug and the life he leads. Right? Wrong. What we end up with is an extremely biased documentary that only skims the surface of what this moron and his low life scum family are really like. What we get is a piece of work very heavily weighted towards the superficial elements of the Noonans, their background, their extended families, the dreams and aspirations of the younger generation.The deeper questions are never covered (although I will say that the scene where the brother is asked about any murders he may have committed is quite chilling) and we end up with a fluffy tale about a grown man hanging around with young boys.The portrayal of this idiot as a gangster is untruthful. Sure, he may be in reality but for the purposes of this documentary we see nothing that can be attributed to a gangster lifestyle in any meaning of the phrase. What we are shown is a nasty, uneducated and extremely unlikeable person who lives off the fear he and his family have created in their own little bubble of a world for years.In conclusion, therefore, the main problem with this film is not the central character/theme. It is not the lack of brain cells in his extended family. It is the fact that the film maker has focused on pallying up to his subjects and in doing so has lost any objectivity. It is as if he has spent a few weeks with some friends and recorded them playing up to him and the camera. For this reason alone I cannot consider this a true documentary, rather a puff piece made by someone who seems overly enamoured with his subject and the perceived life he leads.

acrotty Manchester is his own. Dominic Noonan is represented as the "owner" of Manchester in this convincing documentary. It is everything but Hollwood, as thats what it's not to be. He portrays the stereotypical British criminal, although in his sidekicks' own words "I wouldn't say we are criminals." 'A Very British Gangster' says everything that is needed to be known. Very British, very stereotypical British gangster like. Suited up, no matter how cheap they look, their gold chains and rings and just a simple run through of Dominic Noonan's life, exploiting all his plus and negatives, even if you find them all negative, they are all very interesting to find out about.Recommend, in the eyes of a Media Studies Student.