Once Upon a Time in London

2019

1 hr. 35 min.

Crime

Drama

List

17%

6 Reviews

Tomatometer

98%

500+ Ratings

Audience Score

Gangsters Billy Hill and Jack "Spot" Comer climb the ranks of the London underworld in the 1930s.

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Aidan T

Tedious and uninteresting. Costumes and locations are good but the period music is particularly bad

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

01/23/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Gangster movie of the rise of and fall of Sabini, Comer and Hill. The luck of organized crime during WWII with the black outs. The end shows the Kray twins with Hill in an apparent transfer of power as Hill goes off to retire in Morocco.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

For such a relatively small cast of criminals that are the subject of this movie, it is horribly convoluted. It really should not have been that through to tell a coherent, chronological story. Yet, the incredibly poor editing chopped up the story into an incomprehensible mess. Also, the lighting for most of the shots, while trying to show the dark and dingy London underworld, ending up showing nothing. Most of the fights turned into just a bunch of men grunting and flashes of color. Finally, there were so many misplaced and irrelevant songs being played to slow motion, I thought I had mistakenly put on a musical. Waste of time.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/24/23

Full Review

gareth d

A real genuine straight to VHS/cable b-movie telling of London gangsterism, if you've seen something like Peaky Blinders, this is just shockingly bad.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Gritty gangster movie - Must see for lovers of this genre. Full of gritty violence, balanced with elements of comedy!

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

01/22/23

Full Review

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Simon Rumley

Director

Leo Gregory

Billy Hill

Terry Stone

Jack "Spot" Comer

Holly Earl

Aggie Pickett

Josh Myers

Moisha Blueball

Andy Beckwith

Sonny the Yank

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David Jenkins

Little White Lies

A difference, in that it goes out of its way to deglamourise the lives of its toerag protagonists - chisellers, extorters and degenerates to a man.

Rated: 3/5

Apr 19, 2019

Full Review

Leslie Felperin

Guardian

If the intended audience for this is people who like true crime books with retro cover art then this will probably scratch their itch. But it's not hard to see that the budget was modest and spread as thin as it possibly could be.

Rated: 2/5

Apr 19, 2019

Full Review

Philip De Semlyen

Time Out

There's so many kickings, beatings and slashings administered, it almost tips into self-parody.

Rated: 2/5

Apr 15, 2019

Full Review

Graeme Tuckett

Stuff.co.nz

The storytelling is inadequate, the lack of budget is glaring, the cinematography is perfunctory at best and the soundtrack is an irritating and repetitive pastiche of mostly lousy songs.

Rated: 1/5

Apr 28, 2020

Full Review

Roger Moore

Movie Nation

You'd think a more colorful film could have been wrung out of this lot, and not the dry jerky drift through the decades that director Simon Rumley and British acting's C-list deliver.

Rated: 2/4

Apr 19, 2020

Full Review

David Parkinson

Radio Times

The performances are solid, the visuals slick and the pastiche score catchily effective. Yet Rumley simply doesn't have the resources or the scope to do his ambition justice.

Rated: 3/5

Apr 18, 2019

Full Review

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Synopsis

Gangsters Billy Hill and Jack "Spot" Comer climb the ranks of the London underworld in the 1930s.

Director: Simon Rumley
Executive Producer: Chris Howard, Piyush Shah, Jezz Vernon, Ray Empson, Jyotsna Shah
Screenwriter: Will Gilbey, Simon Rumley, Terry Stone
Production Co: Signature Entertainment
Genre: Crime, Drama
Original Language: English (United Kingdom)
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 16, 2020

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