Gangs of London
Season 2
Episode 6
Dick-thinking and hopes sinking
S2 E6 of Gangs of London is the shortest episode of the entire show, as of this writing: a slender 49 minutes. Within that concentrated frame, it compresses some of the very best and the very worst qualities of Season 2.
This episode features, perhaps, my favourite bit of acting in the entire show. After butchering Ms. Kane in her home, Elliot wanders in a daze for a while, before finally ending up back in the dingy hotel room where he left Ed with Shannon. Shannon finds him slumped in an armchair, wearing the same glassy, vacant expression he’s had ever since seeing his Dad’s body at the airport.
I’d actually found myself going off Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù’s performance as Elliot in the first half of this season. As a hitman for the Investors, and a rat for Singer, Elliot was inexpressive; dour; prickly. For a while, I thought Dìrísù had lost the thread of the show’s most relatable character.
But then, in this sequence, all of the turbulent emotions that Elliot’s kept a lid on come boiling to the surface at once. We’ve never seen him like this before; he sobs, and babbles, and hyperventilates, and clutches at himself, jerking away when Shannon horrifiedly tries to comfort him. These are the mannerisms of a small boy, learning that No, in fact, It’s Not All Going to Be OK. They’re the mannerisms of a person in the grip of anguish so acute that the experience is literally intolerable, from one second to the next. It’s authentically upsetting to watch; more so than any of the simulated gore effects Gangs of London routinely trafficks in.
As much as I hate the choices in the show’s writing that led this character to this point in the first place, I find that I completely buy the depth of Elliot’s pain. And, when Shannon reveals to him that Sean is culling the Investors, and he puts two-and-two together that Sean was the one who killed his Dad for that flash drive, I buy the profundity of his need for revenge.
As much as I hate the choices in the show’s writing that led this character to this point in the first place, I find that I completely buy the depth of Elliot’s pain.
That’s the thing: Gangs of London is very good at melodrama. It knows the gestures to use to communicate epic rage, and terror, and sorrow, and dread, and heartbreak. It knows exactly where to place the camera, and what direction to give its actors, to convey emotional urgency and depth of feeling.
Most of the time, anyway. S2 E6 also contains my least favourite piece of acting in the whole show. Now that they’re well on their way to wiping the Investors off the board, Sean and his new ally Koba try to win Asif over to their side. Asif’s smuggling operation is the biggest in London, and he stands to lose the most if the Investors cease to not be unalive. Sean and Koba need him in their corner if they want to control London.
Without Sean’s knowledge, Koba offers Asif a “sweetener”; something to make a change of allegiance more palatable. That sweetener is Lale: the woman who murdered his son. Lale is snatched away from the heart of her hideout, and wakes up to find herself suspended from her ankles, hanging hogtied from a rope in Asif’s drawing room.
Sean confronts Koba about the deal he made; selling the woman he loves(?) for a foothold in London’s criminal ecosystem. Koba justifies himself: the Investors are weakened, but not destroyed. They’ll come back, and when they do, he and Sean need to be entrenched as the dominant power in this corner of the global economy. “Don’t be led by your dick, Sean,” he admonishes the Wallace scion.
Sean gets right up in his face and screams: “This is not! About! My! FUCKING! DIIIIIIICK!!!”
That’s a pretty terrible line of dialogue, all by itself, but what elevates it to realms of unintentional comedy is Joe Cole’s shrieking, go-for-broke line delivery, accompanied by a scare-chord on the soundtrack. Here, the actor leans all the way into the histrionic gestures that caused me to find Sean off-putting from the word go.
S2 E6 benefits from having a tight scope and a taut pace. The episode is structured around Lale’s capture and imprisonment. Reader: if you’ve been following along with this series of recaps, you’ve probably picked up that I simp for Narges Rashidi, in her role as the leader of the Kurdish insurgency. So be it: this episode gives her the spotlight, and she dazzles.
Being the resourceful freedom-fighter that she is, she manages to swing herself like a pendulum over to a table, where Asif left Chekhov’s whisky snifter. Crushing it in her palm, she surreptitiously cuts through her bonds. She almost manages to kill Asif, after goading him with the memory of the son she slaughtered. Theirs is the oldest and most deeply-felt enmity between any two characters in Gangs of London, and Asif Raza Mir makes a great scene partner for Rashidi; where he puts up a smarmy facade with other characters, with her, his hate is lain bare.
Asif Raza Mir makes a great scene partner for Rashidi; where he puts up a smarmy facade with other characters, with her, his hate is lain bare.
She almost delivers the coup de grâce, but Asif activates the house’s alarm, and she has to fight her way out through waves of bodyguards.
Gangs of London is at its best for as long as it stays suspended in its set-pieces, and S2 E6 has a tremendous one. Director Nima Nourizadeh already did a great job with Elliot’s infiltration of Koba’s compound in S2 E5, and Lale’s escape from Asif’s opulent townhouse is even better. Her battle leads her from a dining room, through a kitchen, to a climactic, vicious struggle with multiple simultaneous opponents in an opulent bathroom.
The sequence plays with high-contrast, Nicolas Winding-Refn-esque lighting, a visual affectation that contrasts the cinematography’s usual drab palette. The bathroom’s ambient lighting is controlled by a panel on the side of a hot tub, which keeps getting incidentally mashed by the combatants, cycling through primary and secondary colours. A light source is even incorporated into the choreography itself; when Lale uses a torch to stave in an opponent’s skull, the blood-drenched bulb briefly casts the scene in a deep, ruby red. It’s very Evil Dead 2; not remotely a plausible way for the light and the blood to interact, but it’s a memorable, stylish flourish, which is all the justification it needs.
The craft that goes into shaping these high-key action beats is reliably exemplary in Gangs of London. The choreography is intense; the physical performances are persuasive; the rhythms of tension and release are orchestrated with confidence and flair. Most movies – let alone TV shows – struggle to meet the standards that this show routinely sets for its action.
Gangs of London is at its best for as long as it stays suspended in its set-pieces, and S2 E6 has a tremendous one.
But, as Season 2 wears on to its conclusion, it grows harder to ignore the way that the spectacle is trotted out like a show pony, repeating the same handful of tricks with minor variations. This could work in a more episodic, monster-of-the-week mode of television. But we’re not in that mode: this is serialised drama, the dynamics shifting wildly from one episode to the next. The showrunners keep contriving new reasons for ultraviolent conflict, but that violence is increasingly divorced from any sort of coherent context.
In this episode, for instance, Shannon brokers a meeting between Ed and Marian (two people who, if you remember, tried to kill each other the last time they met in person). Marian has misgivings about Sean aligning himself with Koba; misgivings so severe, apparently, that she’s willing to depose her son and reinstate the old Wallace-Dumani partnership, with the elder generation re-emerging as the rulers of London.
Which… what?? I mean, seriously, if you take a step back and think about it: what??? Back in Season 1, Marian was one of the main agents who caused the rift between the Wallaces and the Dumanis in the first place! She was the quickest to assume that Ed was complicit in her husband’s murder, and the first to encourage Sean to blow everything up in reprisal. For her to ally herself with Ed, against Sean, is such a wild 180 for the character to take.
Sure, she’s expressed some grudging reticence about Sean’s leadership, and she has reason to dislike Koba. (He tried to helicopter-assassinate her, after all.) But, I mean… Ed’s tried to kill her, too, and that represented an intimate, personal violation of trust, as opposed to Koba’s remote, indifferent professionalism. The groundwork has not remotely been laid for such a sharp, sudden change in this character’s priorities, and I’m not convinced by the perfunctory dialogue handed to Michelle Fairley.
Do you see what I mean, about the lack of “coherent context”? I’ve tried very hard in these reviews to recount the events of Season 2 as though they make sense, so I don’t think I’ve quite captured the feeling of the show steadily becoming unmoored, free-floating nonsense. Anyone might betray anyone else, at any time, for any reason, as long as it generates a pretext for more fight scenes.
I don’t think I’ve quite captured the feeling of the show steadily becoming unmoored, free-floating nonsense.
Case in point: Lale successfully escapes Asif’s lair, though not before he gouges a chunk out of her foot with a poker. She limps barefoot into the rain-damp streets of London in the middle of the night, gasping and whimpering from her incredible exhaustion and physical pain. An SUV pulls up beside her, and the driver climbs out to greet her. Terror turns to relief on her face: it’s Sean.
He gently loads her into the back of the car. Lale’s inner monologue echoes romantically on the soundtrack: “You came for me… you came for me…”
Then, Sean delivers her right back to Asif’s house.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, as he shuts the door behind him. Lale is dragged down the hallway by her hair, screaming her lungs out, back into the Hell she just fought so hard to escape.
Like I say: the melodrama of it is effective. Rashidi throws herself body and soul into this episode, selling the bejesus out of this ferocious warrior-woman who clings to a single, tenuous thread of hope, only to have it snap. The direction milks Sean’s betrayal of the person he loves(?) for every drop of pathos and cruelty.
But, when considered soberly: is this really the most productive course for Gangs of London’s ongoing drama to take? Why, exactly, does Sean feel that he has to deliver Lale to Asif? The script frames it as something he does sorrowfully and reluctantly, as though he has no other choice… but why? He’s holding all the cards right now. The Investors are running scared after he obtained the flash drive; we hear news reports of overseas financiers being murdered in their droves. And he’s made Koba and Asif look like punks for the last five episodes; why should he have to indulge their whims? He’s not between a rock and a hard place, here.
If Sean did decide to rescue Lale from Asif’s clutches, sure, that would drive a wedge between him and his new allies… but wouldn’t that be a better way to generate conflict as we head into the season’s endgame? Wouldn’t it give Sean a little bit of humanity, some meaningful inner conflict, for him to have someone he protects out of love, despite the strategic advantage? If this was, in fact, About His Fucking Dick? Would that not complicate him in an interesting way?
It’s not shocking for Sean to betray Lale, at this point; he’s demonstrated, ad nauseam, that he’ll pursue power at any cost.
Corin Hardy wanted Gangs of London to be “the most dangerous show on television.” I think we’re seeing the results of that mission, once again. Every time a character reaches a crossroads, they take the darker path, without fail. They invariably choose the course of action that will lead them to become more callous; more inhumane. (The sole exception I can think of is Ed, coming to Luan’s defence in Episode 4: lo and behold, my favourite character beat in the season.)
After a certain number of crossings, the darkness becomes numbing; banal; expected. It’s not shocking for Sean to betray Lale, at this point; he’s demonstrated, ad nauseam, that he’ll pursue power at any cost. The melodramatic way that Sean is framed in this moment treats him like he’s a tragic, conflicted antihero… but he really isn’t. At every inflection point, every moment that counts, he’s revealed himself to be a brutal, cruel, ruthless mob boss, and Joe Cole’s moist-eyed performance can’t distract from how one-note his character has become.
- Review Series: Gareth Evans
Is It Good?
Nearly Good (4/8)
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Andrew is a 2012 graduate of the University of Dundee, with an MA in English and Politics. He spent a lot of time at Uni watching decadently nerdy movies with his pals, and decided that would be his identity moving forward. He awards an extra point on The Goods ranking scale to any film featuring robots or martial arts. He also dabbles in writing fiction, which is assuredly lousy with robots and martial arts.