The End

Against the background of London's East End, the novice film maker Nicola Collins investigates the fascinating complexity of the lives of her father and his friends: notorious crooks who turned their familiar surroundings, destroyed by World War Two, into a violent underworld.
All the characters portrayed in this tightly composed documentary were born poor and grew up in the East End. They strived for a better life and found it in crime. The hard and merciless nature of the men emerges in the film, but also their authenticity and mutual bond. The End shows us a summary of the bloody history and the confessions of the cockney gangster.
The conversations with the men are loosely grouped by story (for instance boxing was part of the school curriculum), the typical language (some say Cockney rhyming slang was a secret code developed to mislead the cops) and accent (some of the dialogue is subtitled in English!), the codes of honour and the disappointment about the disappearance of the former cohesion of the area. The conversations are shown without any noticeable embellishment, in atmospheric black & white, and their slightly voyeuristic effect helps make you part of a group of crooks you would probably avoid in the local pub or on the street. (EH)