We Still Kill the Old Way Movie Review: Old-School Vengeance

Spoiler Warning: This review contains major spoilers, including discussion of the ending.

We Still Kill the Old Way is a gritty 2014 British crime thriller with a wonderfully simple premise: when retired East End gangster Charlie Archer is murdered by a vicious street gang, his brother Ritchie returns to London and gathers some of his old associates to deal with the people responsible.

And frankly, after seeing what this gang is capable of, I was quite happy to watch the old boys come out of retirement.

The E2 Gang Are Horrible

The film wastes very little time establishing exactly what sort of people we’re dealing with.

These aren’t merely troublesome teenagers or petty criminals. The E2 gang is portrayed as violent, sadistic and seemingly without boundaries. Murder, sexual violence and intimidation are all part of their world.

One scene particularly disturbed me. A mother is terrorised by gang members who threaten her using her own baby, holding the child’s pram dangerously over the edge of a block of flats.

It is absolutely sickening.

Scenes like this are important to the revenge element of the film because they ensure you have very little sympathy left for the gang by the time Ritchie and his old associates decide to intervene.

In Come the Old Boys

Ian Ogilvy is excellent as Ritchie Archer, the brother of murdered former gangster Charlie Archer, played by Steven Berkoff. The film surrounds Ogilvy with a great collection of familiar British faces, including Christopher Ellison, James Cosmo and Lysette Anthony.

There’s something strangely enjoyable about watching these older gangsters look at the younger generation and essentially decide: enough is enough.

They’re hardly angels themselves, of course.

That’s part of the irony.

These are men who lived criminal lives, but the film portrays them as belonging to an older criminal culture that supposedly operated according to certain rules. The E2 gang represents something altogether more chaotic and cruel.

Whether that romanticised version of the “old-school gangster” ever really existed is another question, but within the world of the film, the contrast works extremely well.

I Wanted the Revenge

As with Vendetta, I found myself waiting for the vengeance.

Once a film deliberately shows its villains committing sufficiently horrible acts, it creates an expectation that eventually they’re going to face the consequences. That’s one of the fundamental pleasures of a revenge movie.

And We Still Kill the Old Way does provide plenty of satisfaction in watching these supposedly untouchable young criminals suddenly discover they’re dealing with people considerably more experienced than themselves.

There’s also something interesting about how bravado changes when the threat becomes personal. People who appear completely fearless while terrorising vulnerable victims suddenly aren’t quite so confident when they’re the ones facing the consequences.

Danny-Boy Hatchard Makes Aaron Thoroughly Hateable

Danny-Boy Hatchard plays gang leader Aaron, and if the objective was to create someone I desperately wanted to see brought down, mission accomplished.

Aaron is arrogant, violent and frighteningly comfortable exercising power over vulnerable people.

Which brings me to my biggest disappointment with the film.

Aaron’s Death Was Far Too Quick

After everything the film had shown us, Aaron’s eventual death felt anticlimactic.

Ritchie finally confronts him, but armed police arrive and Aaron is shot.

That’s it.

From a storytelling perspective, I wanted something more.

Not because real-life torture or vigilante violence should ever be celebrated, but because this is a fictional revenge thriller that has spent approximately 90 minutes deliberately making Aaron increasingly monstrous. The audience is being prepared for a major final reckoning between Aaron and Ritchie.

Instead, the police essentially take that moment away.

Considering everything Aaron had done—and particularly how sadistic the film had established him to be—I expected the final confrontation to be the biggest payoff of the movie.

It simply wasn’t.

Interestingly, I had exactly the same frustration with Vendetta: if you’re going to construct an entire film around vengeance and create an especially vile principal villain, don’t make their final reckoning the least satisfying part.

There Is Something Quite Clever Underneath It All

For all the violence, there’s actually an interesting generational theme running through We Still Kill the Old Way.

The title tells you exactly what the film thinks.

The younger gang believes the older generation is irrelevant. Ritchie and his friends are relics from another age.

But experience counts for something.

Watching these older men outthink people young enough to be their grandchildren gives the film a surprising amount of charm alongside the violence.

There’s humour there too, and the camaraderie between the older characters stops the film becoming relentlessly grim.

My Verdict

We Still Kill the Old Way isn’t going to win awards for subtlety, and its romantic portrayal of old-fashioned gangsters shouldn’t be mistaken for social realism.

But as a British revenge thriller?

I really enjoyed it.

Ian Ogilvy makes a convincing old-school gangster, the supporting cast is excellent, the villains are genuinely horrible enough to make you invested in their downfall, and there’s something enormously satisfying about watching a group of supposedly past-it men demonstrate that they shouldn’t be underestimated.

My main disappointment is Aaron.

After everything the film does to make us despise him, his death is simply too quick. I wanted the final confrontation between him and Ritchie to provide the dramatic payoff the whole film had been building towards.

Despite that, it’s an entertaining, nasty little British gangster film that knows exactly what sort of movie it wants to be.

Old-school gangsters, thoroughly unpleasant villains and plenty of vengeance. Just don’t expect the final death to be as satisfying as the build-up deserves.