Contains major spoilers for Legend, Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 and minor spoilers for The Sopranos, The Wolf of Wall Street and Dexter
I recently watched the new Kray twins film Legend as well as the two French films made about Jacques Mesrine - Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 and both of these films portray real life criminals who enjoyed some measure of fame, or infamy, with the general public as well as maybe some admiration and envy. How film and television portray real and fictional criminals is scrutinised a great deal and it is easy to make such people appear more like lovable rogues and outlaws than criminals. The makers of Legend did themselves no favours in calling the film Legend instead of perhaps Criminals or A Film About Violent Men Who Murdered People which I admit isn't as catchy. That is not to say I disapprove of Legend, I enjoyed the film but I thought the filmmakers had perhaps bought too much into the legend of the Krays.
The portrayal of crime and criminals has been a problem for a long time - Goodfellas, The Godfather, The Sopranos, Scarface and Casino all showed gangsters in a way which could see their lives as aspirational (and yes I know that not all of those are based on real people). They were rich and powerful people who did what they wanted, when they wanted. Of course, the characters often met unfortunate ends which you might think would put people off but apparently losing everything - money, freedom, family, life - is not enough of a downside.
In the film Legend both of the Kray twins are played by Tom Hardy and his performance is the best part of the film. The brothers were different from each other in many ways - Ronnie was an openly gay gangster with severe mental health problems and was prone to violent outbursts. Reggie was charming and polite (or at least could play at being those things) and he was the one in charge and seemingly in control but also a talented amateur boxer who could be just as violent as his brother. If these characters were anything like the real-life Krays, then these were interesting people and a dramatic story could be told about how these brothers became the most powerful criminals in London.
Films can be made about thoroughly terrible people without endorsing the things they did. The film Downfall shows Hitler's last days in his bunker as his empire collapsed and that film certainly does not glorify Hitler. Legend does show both of the brothers doing terrible things for which there is no excuse - Reggie beating his wife (although the actual violence isn't shown) and Ronnie's out of control attacks on any number of people. The film at least tries to show that they weren't just businessmen and that the people who suffered weren't just other criminals which is a defence often used by gangsters. At the beginning of the film as Ronnie walked the streets of London and everyone he passed had a friendly chat with him, near the end a barmaid spotted him across the street, stopped dead and then ran in the opposite direction which shows how much his image has changed to the people around him.
Mesrine: Public Enemy Number 1 Trailer
Jacques Mesrine was a notorious criminal in the 60s and 70s, presumably well known in France. So prolific were his criminal activities that just one film wouldn't do and two films were made starring Vincent Cassel as Mesrine. After I had finished watching the films I instantly went online to see if Mesrine had done the things the film showed, and broadly speaking it seems he had. He did sneak a gun into his own trial and escaped, taking the judge as a hostage, he did rob two banks at a time, he did wear elaborate costumes to escape detection - he was known as the Man of a Hundred Faces by the French press. From the beginning it seemed Mesrine wasn't interested in being just another criminal; he wanted to be something more. Throughout the film he showed almost suicidal daring and never did what was simple, easy or clever but made his life far more complicated and harder so as to live up to his own image. To some people he was a French Robin Hood as he supposedly had a code where he targeted only the rich - however like the Shadow in Blackadder he never got round to giving it the poor. He escaped from prison three or four times, including a maximum security prison, and when on the run from the police as "public enemy number one" would arrange interviews and photoshoots with the press.
In Legend the film ends with both Krays heading to prison and in the Mesrine films with the title character being shot by the police - I would say without doubt that in the film Jacques Mesrine was murdered, ambushed by the police at a traffic light in his car he was shot many times by heavily armed police without warning and no attempt made to arrest him or even talk to him (whether this was what really happened is far less clear). Mesrine had stated how he would not be taken alive and would fight if cornered and had already proven himself very willing to kill police officers. Both the Krays and Mesrine sealed their fates as they were too famous and made the authorities look foolish. The Krays flaunted their wealth and success and the inability of the police to do anything about them - they were celebrities. Mesrine reveled in his fame and constantly embarrassed the authorities and towards the end of his career became more politically minded - at least in the excuses he gave for his actions.
Comparing the Krays and Mesrine, Mesrine is certainly a more dashing figure, an outlaw rebel, he robbed banks and frittered away the money; to him there was no end point in having made enough money to be rich for the rest of his life he would always be compelled to commit more crimes. But even if he was more dashing, he wasn't Robin Hood, he murdered people, he kidnapped people, and if it was fame rather than money that motivated him, does it make him a better or worse person? Comparing Legend and the two Mesrine films I'd definitely say the latter were more successful in simply showing the subject's life and letting the viewer judge.
I do struggle with this idea of films and television glorifying gangsters and I like to think that if people see a gangster in a film as cool that they realise they're just watching a film. When I watch Goodfellas I do not think about how good their lives are as I can never escape the fact that they hurt people and that is no way to make a living. The Sopranos showed a lot more of the lives of gangsters than films can manage; films last a couple of hours whereas someone who watched The Sopranos watched eighty-six episodes with each being around fifty minutes long. Inevitably a dedicated viewer would identify with the characters. The first episode of the third season starts with an episode taken entirely from the point of view of the FBI and their efforts to install a listening device in Tony Soprano's house. In the episode the FBI perform their duties entirely legally, they obtain the necessary warrant from a judge and go about their work professionally yet when I watched it I couldn't help thinking "Bloody FBI, trying to bug Tony". The viewer knows Tony is a dangerous criminal and is without a doubt guilty but I took his side against the FBI. The Sopranos focuses as much on Tony's family life as his criminal life and he is a very well-drawn character; he seems real. People often struggle to deal with complicated figures and when people are genuinely evil we can struggle to deal with information that would contradict that - so if it is revealed Stalin gave a lot of support to animal sanctuaries people are confused - how can a brutal dictator and murderer also care about animals? So in The Sopranos we see Tony often being generous, at times being a good father and husband and yes, even being kind to animals, as well as being a violent criminal. It is this dissonance that allows the viewer to see Tony as a good family man who is in difficult circumstances which drive him to do awful things or a bad and violent person who likes to act the part of a caring individual either to manipulate people or salve his own conscience. There is also the third option of a complex person who can be different things at different times; a person who is not all bad or all good. He is a person you could spend a perfectly pleasant evening with and then he would go out and murder someone; which I imagine is what such people are like in real life. I consider The Sopranos to be one of, if not the, best television programme ever made and a huge part of this is the "shades of grey" existence of the characters. The show doesn't glorify them but shows them as real people.
The Wolf of Wall Street was criticised a great deal in that it glorified the people it depicted. In TWoWS Leonardio Di Caprio played Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street stock broker who made a huge amount of money by taking advantage of people and breaking many, many laws (the film is based on a book written by the real Jordan Belfort, and learning that he is a real person and not a fictional creation is like learning that Cruella Deville is real and 101 Dalmations was based on her autobiography). As well as showing the staggering wealth Belfort and his cronies accumulated the film also depicted the lives of excess that they lead -partaking in drugs, prostitutes and wild parties. These "wolves" also showed a contempt for anyone who wasn't like them, anyone who wasn't rich and taking advantage of other people, they also showed a level of decadence that was truly appalling, literally throwing money around, paying women to have their heads shaved, and all manner of juvenile and disgusting pranks and games. Like most recent Martin Scorsese films it is very long, 180 minutes and there was another hour that Scorsese wanted to put in but couldn't justify a four hour film. I felt the length was justified as you spent a long time with these awful people and their awful lives and the never ending party just ground you down and you saw just how far off the rails they had gone. The atmosphere at Stratton-Oakmont, the company they ran, seemed very much like a cult, or maybe just those posh secret societies at Oxbridge we keep hearing about. The company had bizarre initiations and a cult of personality had developed around Belfort.
It is interesting to see Scorsese, well known for making traditional gangster films, making a film about white-collar crime. If we compare it to Goodfellas, in my opinion the best gangster film ever, Jordan Belfort is Henry Hill, the youngster drawn into the criminal life, the over the top broker played by Matthew McConaghy (being in a Scorsese film is part of his Terrible Romantic Comedy Actor Rehabilitation Scheme he's been involved in the last few years) is Robert De Niro's James Conway, explaining the madness of the system to him and Jonah Hill is Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito, the member of the group who is so crazy he worries the other crazy people.
In the past few years we have seen the damage the financial institutions of the world can do - the Mafia can break your legs and burn your business down but Wall Street can ruin whole countries. In Britain Ed Miliband's supposed anti-business stance effected the stock market and dire warnings followed from the rich and powerful that Miliband as Prime Minister would cause financial chaos; which doesn't sound too dissimilar to scare tactics deployed by gangsters. Belfort ruined people's lives, he intentionally preyed on people and lied to them to get their money, and as is pointed out in the film this isn't usually just against rich people playing the stock market but working people trying to invest money wisely for their future. I am sure there are people who watched TWoWS who wanted to have Belfort's life of excess and wealth but they aren't people who I would want to spend time with. TWoWS reminded me of a sketch from Mr. Show - Mr. Show - More Money Equals Better Than as the characters in it had no measure of success other than money. As much as I hate most of the characters portrayed in the film I do think it is a really good movie with Scorsese showing the emptiness of their lives but I do wish that the real Jordan Belfort wasn't given a cameo in the film.
There is an example of glorifying criminals that troubles me far more than any of the films or programmes about organised crime - Dexter. I was a big fan of Six Feet Under and Michael C. Hall was brilliant as David Fisher and as he played the eponymous Dexter I decided to give it a try. Hall's character in Six Feet Under couldn't be further removed from the character he played in Dexter, in the former he was a pleasant, nice and cautious man, and if he was a little tense or wound up the idea of him hurting anyone was ridiculous. Dexter seemed worth watching just to see how Hall would handle this new and very different character.
For those who don't know Dexter is a show about a serial killer who kills serial killers - or at least that was how it was described to me. Dexter actually targeted people he deemed to be deserving of death, sometimes they are serial killers, sometimes they are not not. In one episode in the first season Dexter goes after a person who has been on trial a number of times for killing people in his car while drunk. It comes out that the driver doesn't care and he will continue to drink and drive. Now, the driver is a bad guy who should be in prison, but is he is deserving of the torture and murder (and yes Dexter tortured his victims) that Dexter inflicted? This person never meant to hurt anyone; he doesn't care and is still a risk to people, but he wasn't trying to kill anyone. This is a distinction most legal systems acknowledge but one that Dexter, the character and the show, aren't interested in.
The first season ended with a little voice over from Dexter where he said that if he was found out and all of his crimes came to light, yes, he would be arrested and put in prison but at the same time many people would think he had done a good thing. He had killed people who deserved it. I think the message of the show is in line with this idea, that, yes in reality, you shouldn't go round killing people, but if they're really bad people it's sort of okay. I disagree with this idea wholeheartedly and I might be a bleeding-heart liberal but everyone deserves a trial, everyone deserves justice. I have had many conversations with people who do think this sort of thing, that society needs such a person who will act in extreme ways when the "system" fails. I only watched the first season of Dexter and in all fairness the show might go on to explore these ideas but I don't think I could take any more of it. Much more interesting "serial-killer killers" are found in Seven Psychopaths which in a five minute murder spree montage does more to address the morality of what the serial-killer killers are doing than Dexter managed in the twelve episodes of the first season. And don't even get me started on what Dexter is saying about free will and nature versus nurture in how it sets it up that Dexter was always going to be a serial killer, it was inevitable, and the best way to handle the situation was his adoptive father to train him to kill the "right" people...if nothing else it's bad parenting.
Podcast Recommendation:
I love podcasts - they make commuting, housework and waiting a thousand times better. As this blog has been about crime my recommendation is the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Two people contact the podcast with a problem that they want "Judge" Hodgman to solve, it could be something very practical, a matter of etiquette, anything really. They call in to the show and Judge Hodgman and "bailiff" Jesse Thorn listen and Hodgman will give a verdict. It's always funny and often surreally brilliant - an argument between two brothers about how to deal with the bat infestation in their house is amazing, one brother suggests hiring exterminators, the other...well he doesn't really see what the problem is. Aside from the case being discussed it's worth just being able to listen to John Hodgman talk about stuff as he is one of the funniest and most informed people I have ever heard, he's sort of an American Stephen Fry but nerdier and weirder.
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