- guardian.co.uk,
- Tuesday April 01 2008 16:21 BST
Nominated for the grand jury prize at Sundance, Donal MacIntyre's cinematic debut is a direct offspring of his MacIntyre's Underworld TV series. Acting as his own director, producer, interviewer and sometimes camera operator, this is a one-man show à la Broomfield and, with a charismatic central figure in tubby, bald, gay Manchester gang boss Dominic Noonan, he pulls off a remarkably intimate and unguarded view of a tough part of the city, which seems to be run by gangs and families rather than the police - they are called in to settle disputes as well as to dole out Old Testament justice.
This is the world of Shameless seen from the viewpoint of Paddy Maguire rather than the Gallaghers and without much of the surrounding warmth and comedy counterbalance, and it's entirely one-sided and claustrophobic: we never see or hear from the police or any rivals, just follow Noonan, a practitioner of "protection and banking services" and his relatives through endless trials and operating amid old back-to-back Coronation Street-style terrace houses and desolate pubs.
Noonan seems genial enough at times, but his other face is seen whenever a passer-by gets in the way during filmed interviews and is soon threatened. MacIntyre's line of questioning is sometimes dangerously near the knuckle, as in "There's a shade of lavender about you, Dominic". On another occasion, asking "You don't think there's been enough killing?", he's told "The killing's only just begun." The featured cast includes Noonan's 11-year-old son Bugsy and his elder brother Desmond, an armed robber, executioner and crack addict and you can see real-life gangsters aping the fictional equivalents, with clichés present and correct - huge funerals (complete with vast wreaths and lachrymose singing of My Way), and boxing-club connections. You wouldn't want to live there.
