Peter Bradshaw 

The Guv’nor review – lock, stock and one smoking gangland wannabe

This portrait of Lenny McLean, who appeared in Guy Ritchie’s crime comedy and wanted to be London’s hardest man, is surprisingly engaging
  
  

Lenny McLean with Craig Fairbrass in The Guv’nor
Driven by anxiety … Craig Fairbrass with Lenny McLean in The Guv’nor Photograph: PR Company Handout

Any future biopic of Manchester United’s Paul Ince will have to pick another title, because this one is taken. This is a surprisingly engaging and forthright film about Lenny “the Guv’nor” McLean, the East End bareknuckle fighter, club bouncer and gangland figure who became famous with a cameo role in Guy Ritchie’s movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I expected the usual sentimental geezer-gangster stuff, and there are some cliches. But it is an interesting and personal piece of work, presented by Lenny’s son Jamie, who, despite his own problems and brushes with the law – and what I think might be undiagnosed depression – is engaging, intelligent and likable. Lenny was brutalised by an abusive stepfather and his surviving siblings still refuse to speak on camera. He was driven by anxiety to prove himself the hardest guy in London: a violent man with flashes of wit and charm who was brought back from the brink, just about, by his family. Nice work from Jamie McLean, here. If Danny Dyer deserves a part in EastEnders, so does Jamie.

Watch the trailer for The Guv’nor
 

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