£3 Film: Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Bit of an older one this week, and probably most everyone will have seen this but thought I’d write a little something about it anyway.

Guy Ritchie is one of those directors when you kind of know what you are going to get, though his Sherlock Holmes taking him in a slightly new and more exciting direction. Snatch, RocknRolla, Revolver; all the high-octane, gangster filled, gun ridden, cursing and maiming that anyone could ask for. Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is where this all began, being Guy Ritchie’s first full length feature, and it is here that we see the origins for the majority of his later films, both good and bad. It also introduced to the world two titans of the film industry, Jason Statham and former footballer Vinnie Jones! These great casting decisions aside, Lock Stock is actually a great film, and well worth watching (if you haven’t already seen it).

As with the majority of Guy Ritchie films, it is the intricacies of the plot, or at least its twists and turns, which is the real stand out here. Our Plot follows a group of long-time friends, Bacon (played by Jason Statham), Soap (played by Dexter Fletcher), Tom (played by Jason Flemyng) and finally Eddy (played by Nick Moran) who have gathered up £100,000 to put Eddy into a high stakes poker game with the local nutcast/mob boss/porn shop owner, Harry ‘Hatchet’ Lonsdale, played by P. H. Moriarty. Well things go badly for our group and they end up owing Harry £250,000 which they have to pay back within a week or they start losing fingers. This is really the main thread of the film, though bolted into it, like other Guy Ritchie films, we have a number of other threads. Two Northern Goons hired to steal some real expensive guns, a group of thugs who are planning to rob some drug dealers, and also Chris, played by Vinnie Jones, and his son ‘Little’ Chris, as they go around collecting money for Harry and other odd jobs. Although these strands seem distinctly separate at the outset, they soon begin to entwine leading too a culmination of all of these strands at the end, and in typical Guy Ritchie style, lots of people die. It is probably the interplay between these plot threads and the way they all work in together at the end which is probably the best part of the film. That said, it is kind of obvious who is gonna get it and who isn’t, and even though the film isn’t really about the good guys versus the bad guys, but rather slightly different shades of bad, the ending still seems tailored towards the really bad guys getting horribly murdered. That said, the films builds to a nice crescendo, and it isn’t disappointing when you get there.

Despite all the violence and cursing, its rather a light hearted film. Those who die don’t really matter, or kind of deserve it. While some die in such a comical manner that it really never gets serious, which isn’t a bad thing really, and it helps along the absurdity of the plot in some points; much of this seems reminiscent of Tarantino in say Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs; there is crazy violence, but it is always done with an undertone of humour.

One strange thing about the way it was filmed is the voice-over. Now a lot of the time this is used to describe who someone is, and also to describe how horrible they are and all the rest, but also sometimes used to sum up a scene which could have easily just been filmed. Such as when Eddy is explaining to them how he lost the money, it proceeds with a number of still shots and a voice over describing what happened, which seemed jarring to me and a bit of an odd decision, as if that part had been filmed but they cut it to shorten the running time. Thankfully though, this only happens a couple of times.

Even though I’ve already poked fun at both Statham and Vinnie Jones, I actually think they are the best part of this film, at least in an acting sense. Statham retains all his onscreen charm (if you can call it that), and all the wit of the later Statham films (Crank anyone?). While Vinnie Jones, although yes he is a footballer, he still has his good moments and is surprisingly less wooden than some of the actors. Maybe it is the script, but something just seemed rather stale about some of the deliveries, and some of the jokes fall a bit flat, delivered in a way that is far too scripted for my liking, though I did not notice this the first time I watched it (although that was probably 5 years ago now). Everyone is a hard ass, and I guess that’s the point, but there is something totally fake about that, though in the end that doesn’t really matter. I don’t really have any issue with the accents as some other reviews have pointed at, everything seemed perfectly legible, and those parts which are slang ridden were designed that way, I mean cockney rhyming slang is always funny right? RIGHT?

In the end, despite it now being over 10 years old, it still worth a watch, and definitely one of the best Guy Ritchie films in this style, except probably Snatch. If you like lots of east end dudes cursing up a storm and stabbing/shooting eachother, but also want something a bit more cleverly put together than your average gritty action film, this is definitely worth watching, though if you wanted that you’ve probably already seen this!