The End

Nicola and Teena Collins, director and producer of this documentary, are two London model/actresses who appeared in Guy Ritchie’s ‘Snatch’. Their dad, Les Falco, is an East End hard man-turned- Christian and it’s his Rolodex the two women plunder for this talky portrait of a bunch of ageing cockney hard nuts who reminisce about lives  spent fighting, robbing, avoiding the law, lingering in prison and finding God. These guys are personalities all right, with faces like punchbags and plenty of amusing lines. Inevitably, this is a sympathetic, one-sided film and its familiar perspective is a nostalgic, sometimes tiresome one that imagines a ‘golden age’ when grannies could leave their doors open at night. Which is nonsense, of course, along with the idea that the East End no longer exists simply because there are fewer white people living there.