Gangs of London opens high above the City, as a badly beaten low-level thug blinks back into consciousness to find that he’s hanging upside down from the roof of a half-finished skyscraper. A sharply dressed, soft-faced Joe Cole pours a can of petrol down the rope, detached and meditative, as the boy pleads for his life — “I saw nothing, I’m nobody, please don’t kill me...” Cole strikes a match and, without anger, with a touch of pleading in his voice, says: “What else can I do?” Then he drops the match... and it’s a relief when the rope finally snaps.
It’s a deceptive opening. Sky’s blockbuster crime epic initially appears to be a standard-issue British gangster drama — one of the uncountable offspring
