Villain

This post is part of the Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts

There’s something about British gangsters that seem much more menacing than their American counterparts.

Michael Caine in Get Carter (1970), James Fox in Performance (1970) and Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday (1982) are, despite the posh accents and breaks for tea, a scary, sadistic bunch.

(And taken to a more absurd level, there’s Peter Grant’s gangster "fantasy" in The Song Remains the Same (1976) and Terry Jones’ The Bishop skit on Monty Python).

Richard Burton, as London gangster Vic Dakin in Villain (1971) may be the nastiest of them all: cruel and violent, barely able to keep his back burner of simmering menace from boiling over.

The dichotomy that is Dakin is apparent immediately when he pulls a razor on a suspected informant, slashing him and then leaving him hanging from a window as a warning to others, before getting home in time to bring breakfast to his elderly mum.

Tea time with mum

Modishly attired, always with a suit jacket square, but still wearing a pinky ring, an old school gangster affectation if there ever was one, Dakin lives with his mother, serving her tea in bed and taking her to the seaside resort of Brighton every Sunday (she seems clueless about what preoccupies her sonny outside of their genteel home).

Dakin has nothing but disdain for those who aren’t “in the life” (walking through a residential neighborhood, he looks around and declares, “Stupid punters. Telly all week and screw the wife on Saturday”) and is in a sado-masochistic gay relationship with Wolfe (Ian McShane), a pimp apparently in debt to Dakin. (Dakin’s idea of foreplay is a hard punch to Wolfe’s gut, doubling him over).

Ian McShane and Burton

Although apparently well off, Dakin decides to pull off a reckless daytime payroll robbery, bullying a territorial rival into joining him. They succeed but not before blood spills and cars crash. The gang splits up, agreeing to meet later to divide the take.

Stoical Police Inspector Matthews (Nigel Davenport) is keeping tabs on Dakin and thanks to fingerprints found at the scene of the robbery, he arrests Lowis (Josh Ackland), a gang member whom Dakin also believes has double crossed him and hidden the money.

Although he’s under police guard in a hospital, Dakin’s heavies abduct Lowis and threaten to kill him unless he turns up the money. Lowis takes Dakin and Wolfe to an abandoned warehouse where the cash is supposedly hidden. While Matthews and the police close in, Dakin kills Lowis before he and Wolfe are caught.

As Matthews leads him away, Dakin swears he’ll beat the charges by intimidating the jury, telling him, “If I looked at one of them, they’d piss in their pants. I’m Vic Dakin!”

Burton described the film in his personal diary as “a racy, sadistic London piece about cops and robbers – the kind of bang, bang, calling all cars stuff that I’ve always wanted to do and never have.”

The screenplay was written by British television veterans Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, based on an initial treatment by American actor – and real-life Gambino family associate – Al Lettieri (The Godfather), and is based somewhat on the notorious, real-life British gangsters the Kray twins. (And given Dakin’s mother obsession, there are echoes of James Cagney in White Heat (1949) as well).

"I'm Vic Dakin!"

Here’s Burton again from his personal diary: “Villain was received badly in the US and with rapture in the UK. I know it is cockney and therefore difficult for Yanks to follow but one would have thought the critics to be of sufficiently wide education to take it in their stride. Anyway, I am so delighted it is doing well in UK. The American reaction was a surprise.”

Like rock & roll, gangster movies were an American import that the British put their own stamp on. While Get Carter and The Long Good Friday are admired today, Villain is mostly overlooked. The script is witty, the violence brutal and Vic Dakin is a complex villain played to the scene-chewing hilt by an energized Richard Burton. It’s worth checking out.