The male lead, Tom Hardy, has a natural tough-guy aura. He was purely handsome in his younger days, and as he grows older, he has gained an extra layer of mature masculine charm.
In the drama, he plays Harry, a "mediator" whose main job is to mediate and pass messages between London's two major criminal families, the Harrigans and the Stevensons, as well as clean up the series of messes they create.
This is not an easy job. A slight mistake could cost him his life, but Harry is smart enough...
Harry knows exactly where to place his loyalty when two opposing forces clash.
Due to the long-standing enmity between the Harrigan and Stevenson families, their children are not allowed to have any contact with each other.
However, one night, Eddie Harrigan and Tommy Stevenson unexpectedly appeared in the same bar.
Before others could recover from the shock, Eddie got into trouble.
High on drugs, he stabbed a bar customer and fled in a panic...
Many people present witnessed him injuring someone, including the stabbed customer who could identify him.
So, Eddie's father contacted Harry to handle the matter immediately.
Harry didn't panic at all when he got the news. He was already very experienced in dealing with such things.
He first disposed of the clothes Eddie wore that day, then went straight to the bar and threatened the boss to delete the surveillance footage.
He also quickly found the hospital where the injured customer was staying through his connections. Before the police arrived, he coordinated the testimony with the other party. After a series of actions, he completely cleared Eddie of the stabbing incident.
But things didn't end there. The real tricky trouble was just beginning.
That night, Eddie and Tommy appeared in the bar together. After the conflict, Tommy disappeared mysteriously and never returned home...
Tommy's father, Richie, the leader of the Stevenson family, sensed something was wrong immediately. He kept a close eye on Eddie and was determined to ask him in person about his son's whereabouts.
But the problem was that Eddie insisted that he and Tommy were not together at all. He put on a perfect act, and no matter how you questioned him, you couldn't get a single truthful word out of him.
And Richie wasn't going to wait any longer.
Recently, the two families have been fiercely fighting over the distribution rights of the "new product" fentanyl. He began to suspect that Conrad Harrigan might be setting a trap for him using Tommy's disappearance.
Conrad is the apparent leader of the Harrigan family and Eddie's grandfather, but behind him is an even more powerful and resourceful woman, his wife Maeve.
If Conrad is the gun, then Maeve (the leading actress in 1923) is the scope, always advising him behind the scenes.
When Conrad was hesitant about arranging for Harry to shoot Richie during a deal with him, Maeve made him abandon the plan with just one sentence.
It was also because of Maeve's words that he began to suspect his lifelong friend, thinking that he was a traitor.
He even shot his friend dead in front of the whole family...
As soon as his friend died, Harry was arrested by the police the next day. This timing made Harry suspect that maybe Conrad's friend was not a traitor but an insider for the police.
At the same time, Eddie was secretly transferred to Conrad's villa. Arrogant and unruly, he didn't realize that he had made a big mistake at all.
Of course, the reason for his behavior, apart from inheriting the family's violent blood, is also due to the guidance of his grandmother Maeve.
Maeve didn't blame Eddie for his reckless behavior; instead, she thought his stabbing someone showed his courage and was convinced that Eddie would be the one to revitalize the family...
On the other hand, Harry started investigating Tommy's disappearance and soon found that someone was deliberately hiding the truth behind the scenes.
The clues eventually led to the owner of that bar.
Without saying a word, Harry went back, gave him a severe beating until he knelt down and begged for mercy, and forced him to tell the truth...
In the end, he did find Tommy.
However, the person had already become a box of "building blocks" and had long been cold...
With Tommy dead, an all-out war is inevitable.
And Harry, caught in the middle as the mediator balancing both sides, suddenly became the target in the eye of the storm...
Ganglands inherits Guy Ritchie's consistent black humor and aesthetic of violence. The dialogue and fragmented clues are interwoven, seemingly chaotic, but each scene is full of tension.
Harry is a typical Guy Ritchie-style character: smart, calm, doesn't want to get into trouble, and survives by virtue of emotional intelligence and tactics.
But the problem is, the more you don't want to take sides, the easier it is to be used as a tool repeatedly.
The more you want to be on good terms with both sides, the more you end up being rejected by both...
Overall, the pace of this drama is not fast, but it is this slow-cooking way that makes every plot twist more fatal and makes people want to watch more.
Ganglands has updated four episodes so far. Fans who like this type can download and watch it.
