The director of the best action films of the decade tackles more gangsters. We can’t wait.
For every film fan, there’s a moment when they know they’ve fallen in love with a film.
In the case of Gareth Evans’ wonderful Indonesia- set action film The Raid, it’s the moment when the superb hallway fight comes to a bloody end.
After battling what seemed like a never-ending army of henchmen with his fists, feet, machetes, and basically anything he could use as a weapon, our hero Rama (Iko Uwais) grabs a villain by the neck, propels his own body backwards, and impales the henchman’s throat through the broken frame of a door.
It’s breathtaking in its choreography, execution, and Looney Tunes-esque violence.
At this moment, the world knew that Uwais and the film’s director, Gareth Evans, were destined for even bigger things.
Fast forward eight years – with Evans giving us a sequel to The Raid, as well as occult-horror Apostle, in the interim – and the Welsh director is dipping his toe back into the underworld with Gangs of London.
In terms of the plot, Gangs of London delves into the world of London’s modern-day criminal underworld. When the head of a criminal organisation, Finn Wallace (Colm Meaney) is assassinated, the sudden power vacuum his death creates threatens the fragile peace between the intricate web of gangs operating on the streets of the city.
Now it’s up to the grieving, volatile and impulsive Sean Wallace (Joe Cole) to restore control and find those responsible for killing his father.
With episodes directed by Evans, Corin Hardy and Xavier Gens, the cast here is really strong too with Cole and Meaney joined by Sope Dirisu and Michelle Fairley among others.
As for Meaney’s immediate future, his new film The Last Right is currently in cinemas and the Irish icon chatted with JOE about his illustrious career. During the course of the conversation, we had to know about the status of Gangs of London.
“I just do a cameo in it. I’m like the godfather of a crime family and I’m basically shot in the very first shot of the show. I’m assassinated, which kicks off a whole thing. My story is all told in flashbacks to when I was alive, but when the show starts, I’m dead. It’s a tremendous piece of writing – I haven’t seen a whole episode, I’ve been doing a lot of ADR work – and it looks fantastic. It’s incredibly violent,” said Meaney.
Of course, this isn’t the first time that the Dubliner has played a notorious gangster before – our own Rory Cashin picked his role in Layer Cake as the best film that Meaney has starred in.
At present, Gangs of London doesn’t have a release date but it will be shown on Sky in 2020.
We can’t wait.
Main image via Corin Hardy/Twitter
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