The End
Cast: Victor Dark, Les Falco, Bobby Reading, Jimmy Tibbs.
Dir: Nicola Collins
Rating: 4/5
Cinema screens may have been overloaded with documentary movies in the last few months but this one that you really shouldn't miss out on.
Against the background of the East End of London England, Nicola Collins explores the fascinating complexity of the lives of her father and his friends: infamous criminals that shaped their war torn environment into a violent underworld.
The End is a story never before been told of a group of men with a common bond. All born in the East End of London into poverty striving for a better life and all found that life in crime.
Unashamed and unapologetic these men live their lives defined by a code of honour. The End reveals the bloody history and the confessions of the cockney gangster.
Debut filmmaker Nicola Collins and her producer sister Teena have delved into the criminal world of the East End beginning at the end of the Second World War and, being the daughters of the featured Les Falco were privy to those involved.
The End isn't there to shove any particular message in your face about how they are all changed men and deeply regret what they have done it instead paints a very honest picture of a group of guys that have done some very bad things.
They do open up about the things that they have done and some of the stories are a bit violent and gruesome but by the time the credits roll you can't help but like these blokes.
The movie is very sharply edited cut in a way that keeps everyone talking about the same topic from growing up, being bullied, what they have done and time in prison, which allows the movie to flow along nicely.
And being the daughters of a man that they all knew the interviews are perhaps more truthful and open that if they were talking to an outsider but the main problem with this movie is nobody says anything incriminating which suggests that we are not getting the whole story, which is a real shame.
But for a first time filmmaker this is a classy piece of directing that shows off real flair and ability to get the best out of those on the camera.
And despite what seems as rather a grim topic to make a movie about The End is a very entertaining, and in places very funny, film that takes us into the heart of violence in the East End if not giving us the whole truth.
The End is out in cinemas now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw