Inevitably, this is a sympathetic, one-sided film and its familiar perspective is a nostalgic, sometimes tiresome one that imagines a 'golden age' when grannies could leave their doors open at night.

| Original Score: 2/6 | May 1, 2009

The flesh-crawling thrill is that these stories about armed robberies, ghastly fights, and grisly murders are utterly compelling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 1, 2009

Intentionally or not, Nicola Collins's filmed interviews with various old-school East End geezers give us a fair idea of their sentimentality, paranoia, smugness and flashes of humour.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 1, 2009

This is a disappointingly reverential exercise in East End mythologising that's too busy sucking up to its rheumily sentimental interviewees to spend enough time exploring the few interesting observations they do make.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 1, 2009

The film, a success on the festival circuit, has been described as "carving, visceral, right in your face... scary, gob-smacking". I merely concur, in case they know where I live.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 1, 2009

This grainy documentary that lets the Cockney hard men brag about violence, honour codes and the changed East End. Director Collins appeared with her sister Teena in Guy Ritchie's Snatch. That explains a lot.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 1, 2009

The second half of this most watchable debut sows a few doubts. The old sweats admit that prison has wasted half their lives, that they indeed "done wrong" and, in two cases, that God has saved them from themselves.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 1, 2009