Script doctor

Gangster #1.

SOME MOVIE STARS materialize from nowhere on the mountaintop, then take years and years rolling down, scarring through the brambles of bad cash-in career choices, eating the gravel of public-behavior embarrassments, sucking more air as they descend into B-movie projects. It's a not-untypical saga occasionally granted third-act salvage by character-actor resuscitation – one arena in which Hollywood appreciates a star who's hit the skids but keeps pluggin' on.

The above scenario pretty well describes the career arc of Malcolm McDowell, who got a launch as lucky as could be imagined, then gradually pissed it all away. He started out by starring in Lindsay Anderson's If... and O Lucky Man!, as well as Kubrick's Clockwork Orange – a surreal youth rebellion you can debate the merits of now, but, at the time, one that defined edgy Brit-goes-international cinema. And McDowell was the next-generation Angry Young Man poster child astride each.

Then he went Hollywood (or sometimes worse, via multinational coproductions). Especially notable missteps were 1978's all-star disaster flick Voyage of the Damned, perhaps the worst Holocaust movie ever; Paul Schrader's pretentious '82 Cat People remake, in which he and Nastassja Kinski kept (to quote Pauline Kael) "jumping out of their skins and leaving little piles of gunk behind"; chewing up the title role in Bob Guccione's Caligula, a stab at mainstream semiporn that has its cult defenders now but then looked like nothing more or less than a desperate money-grab.

There followed increasingly camp, sorry employment: horror flicks (Cyborg 3, Disturbed), voice work (Nazis: The Occult Conspiracy, Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys), vid sequels (The First 9 1/2 Weeks, Wing Commander IV), water-treading TV gigs (Jack Cassidy in The David Cassidy Story!), and bit parts in failed A-budget movies (Tank Girl, Mr. Magoo).

This sounds like a struggling-to-make-it résumé, not an ex-star's. Suddenly white-haired, both paunchy and gaunt, McDowell looked/acted like he'd logged way too many miles on the Ventura Highway. In 1997's little-seen Robert Downey Sr. indie Hugo Pool (a sweet movie if you can find it), he played Alyssa Milano's dysfunctional, semi-estranged dad – and seemed way more haggard and bizarre than necessary. (It's not saying much to note that only a tragically tweaky Downey Jr. flattered McDowell's appearance of ill-health among the rather starry cast.) Was it before or after that personal freak-showing that he inherited Ricardo Montalban's mantle in the mercifully brief Fantasy Island revival?

The third act officially rises on McDowell with Gangster #1, a delayed (according to the Internet Movie Database, M.M. has logged 14 variably crap credits since it was completed), latest Brit turbo-nouveau-crime flick that's not quite as flamboyantly funny as Sexy Beast. But it's much less annoying than the oeuvre to date of Guy Ciccone. Very entertaining, this retro-rockin' bloodbath gives Malc top billing, even if he's just the totemic framing device for a feature-length flashback starring young turks. Still, by cashing in on the notion that Mr. McD is taken for granted as a berserker, on-screen or off, the movie does pull off its one conceptual coup.

McDowell plays an unnamed (save in the credits as "Gangster 55") thug who recalls his career on finding out that a former associate is leaving the hoosegow after 30 years. Rewind to 1968, when protag's younger self (a reasonably redolent and credibly psychotic Paul Bettany) got apprenticed to reigning "Butcher of Mayfair" Freddie Mays (David Thewlis, not quite hard enough to convince). Hypnotized by adoptive dad's suave Playboy Club style, No. 55 is a good – if perhaps over-sadistic – li'l soldier until his general goes "soft" over Jean Shrimpton-esque "skinny bird" Karen (Saffron Burrows). Inner Iago unleashed, 55 casually orchestrates Big Daddy's downfall and his own ruthless throne assumption.

You could interpret this as the covert homo jealousy tale that it is. But even that's granting more depth than necessary to Paul McGuigan's surface-deep feature debut. (We'll discount his prior helming of irksome Irvine Welsh omnibus The Acid House.) With its terrific soundtrack and great feel for an undercaste's tacky take on 1960s decorative fashion, Gangster #1 is as delicious/superfluous as Chanel's own No. 5. Everything is stylized, to prove authorship if nothing else – and it's well done, less noxiously me-me-me than those Ritchiepix.