In a world of gangs and villains, one man – Moon – will stop at nothing to get the girl and take the spoils. Pete Walker’s affectionate low-budget homage to the gangster thriller is packed with sights and sounds from a Britain about to swing out of the 60s and into a somewhat less optimistic decade. It offers not only rare glimpses of a world gone by, but also some unexpected twists on generic convention. The cast includes Hammer girls Luan Peters (Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil) and Virginia Wetherell (Doctor Jekyll & Sister Hyde, Demons of the Mind).
Nicolas Winding Refn: “Man of Violence was introduced to me by a friend of mine called Sam Dunn, who runs the BFI’s Flipside label. I was hooked from the second he mentioned it; I just loved the title. It’s one of the best examples of those great offbeat gangster films that the UK made back then, it’s really peculiar. At one point Moon, the film’s macho gun-for-hire lead, has to seduce a gay guy to get some information out of him. You’d never see that in an American gangster movie. Peter Walker never got his due because of the type of genre films he made, but I really respect him.”