Review of My Name Is Lenny (2017) by Morgan E — 02 Jul 2017

It would be easier to point out what Josh Helman gets right as the Guv'. You see him try to be a hard man: seriously feeble attempt. You see him fight: no way near the raging physicality of the real Lenny. And when you think it could not get any worse, he has sex. One minute into the film, I said it's a write off. The film is a 90-minute embarrassment to the man, the east end, to London, an affront on British culture.

Aside from a boring plot and hardly any solid themes, it can't be stressed how poorly Lenny is portrayed. Yes, he was savage, but he had his virtues. What made him so terrifying - as is the same for many high profile gangsters - is that one second Lenny could be as calm as a Hindu cow in lovely green pastures and the next he second he could switch to a raging bull in a china shop. As with many famous gangsters seen on film and television, such as Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, or more recently in British cinema, Hardy's dual role playing the Kray twins, also famous East End gangsters. We only witness Lenny the raving lunatic. There's hardly a second of calmness in the entire film. There's almost nothing to reflect upon anyway, and there are so many characteristics of Lenny that could have been explored, such as the claim he had OCD or his alcoholism.

First thing you notice about Josh though, is he just doesn't have the size or physicality. We see him guzzling beers, but he doesn't have the big beer gut. There's a POV close up of Lenny pounding his bloody fists into some poor bastard on the cobbles, but I really felt nothing. You watch the real McLean in interviews on Youtube, and he only has to lift one fat little sausage finger to stab terror into your heart.

For a boxing film, the boxing scenes are awful. There's a lot of talk about boxing style and game plans outside the ring, and there should be some development in the choreography from the first street fight to the epic showdown with Roy Shaw. We should see some progression, but we just see the same wild swinging nutter from the cobbles. There's plenty of boxing footage out there, so there's no excuse.

Of course, the boxing and the struggle to be the 'Guv'nor' is just the surface narrative. The not so subtle subtle underlying narrative is that deep down he's just the same fragile, cowering boy beaten by his abusive stepfather. Now, he's the one giving out beatings; sometimes justly, often unjustly over the smallest seeming slights. There are repeated flashbacks to his father beating him and his mother, and these scenes are done in the most vulgar and tasteless way conceivable. And in the end there's no sense of closure. For a more honest, in-depth look at the myth, I would suggest watching the feature documentary The Guv'nor.