WHEELING AND DEALING FOR THEIR LIVES : "LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS"

Yes, another epic / infamous Guy Ritchie – Jason Statham extravaganza. And yes, I know, all this is not actually considered much more than just entertainment. But then again, I reckon we need to be entertained from time to time, right ? And if this entertainment basically comes in the form of a successful, if slightly violent comedy concerning the crime world, well, all the better. On the back of the copy of the film that I watched, the DVD company had opted not to put much of a synopsis, just a lot of visuals and comments from critics. I found this a bit odd but carried on watching the film regardless. It turned out there was a reason for this. Although the film starts off on quite simple premises, it grows and grows, adds in characters left, right and center, strands of the story interweave when you least expect them too, in short it all gets so convoluted and the film is such a comedy of errors that I have actually now written half a paragraph about it without being able to tell you the story itself. So go figure… =) Ok seriously though, here’s my stab at it without giving the plot away. So, 1, 2 3 and 4 are four mates. They make their living in various forms of shady business, 1 shifts stolen goods, 2 cheats in high stakes card games etc. It’s a bit of a risky business but they seem to be basically getting on alright, until that is, 2 (who is not, naturally, the only person cheating at high stakes poker) ends up owing a notoriously ruthless crime boss half a million pounds. Now this involves his three mates as well, as they helped him get the money to join the game together and the crime boss is well aware of this. So the giddy foursome have a week to get the money together or… Er you know. Apart from the obvious, the crime boss has also declared he will take 2’s father’s bar – not exactly a clean slate himself – which complicates matters. Now, it seems pretty straight forward – and a tad boring – up till here. It is precisely at this point that things start to get “complicated”. It all starts, as you can imagine, with a cunning plan – a heist no less – to get the money together. It goes totally AWOL from thereon in. I will say no more, but believe me, it’s absolutely brilliant. Guy Ritchie has two main assets in my book. Firstly, the two films of his that I have seen – Snatch and this one – both contain, clean, snappy editing that is especially well suited to their genres. The editing is also very fast – paced and innovative, keeps you on your toes throughout. Ritchie then couples that with snappy dialogue. It’s a very British thing really, you either like it or you don’t; I personally love it. Snappy, sarcastic, but creative and hilarious with it. Throughout the film, like Snatch, there are a few clichés. But I mean, as long as you’re not looking for anything life-changing you’ll be fine. Ritchie also is very good at getting together an absolute plethora of bizarre characters. They may or may not be clichés, my point is there are so many of them you would never really expect them to work well together. Funnily enough no, everyone has just the right amount of screen time and although they seem disparate they work really, really well together. In short, yes, a very fun and funny movie. Plus, I really cannot over-estimate the success of the script in weaving all manner of bizarre storylines together. I mean if you watched Snatch and thought that was convoluted… You really ain’t seen nothing yet…