Lock,
Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
Reviewed
by Leonard Heldreth, October, 1999
A campy,
rhythmic soundtrack, feuding gangs, copious
bullets and blood—does this sound like any number of recent American
films, especially those directly or indirectly involving Quentin Tarantino?
Actually, it's a British film, but, outside of the fact that the English
accents are so heavy they need subtitles, it could be an American
film. New director Guy Ritchie denies the Tarantino influence and
cites The Long Good Friday as his major inspiration, and it is true
that much of the violence, especially the shootings, occurs either
offstage or with less of the graphic detail than in Pulp Fiction.
Ritchie made the film on a very low budget, and it is already a runaway
hit in England.
The action and plot reversals are relentless. Take four
young Brits who lose heavily playing cards with a local porn king,
mix in a black drug dealer and his gang, add the porn king's hit men,
and leaven with the antics of an amateur gang of robbers, and you
have the recipe for violent confrontation, endless gunfire, and a
stack of corpses. Eddy accurately states near the end that everyone
who knew anything about the situation is dead. Like most recent films
of this genre, parody lurks barely beneath the surface, as in the
old porn dealer's fascination with antique guns.
The first third of this film is demanding as the viewer
tries to keep up with all the different characters and plot lines
which are being introduced. There are the four pals—Eddy (Nick
Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Bacon (Jason Statham) and Soap (Dexter
Fletcher)—who owe half a million pounds to "Hatchet"
Harry Lonsdale (P. H. Moriarty). Behind Harry are his enforcers, Barry
the Baptist (Lenny McLean), who holds people's heads under water until
they see the light, and Big Chris (soccer star Vinnie Jones) who has
a soft spot only for his son, Little Chris. Then there is the trio
(or quartet) of potheads who have accumulated nearly a million pounds
in small bills, which spill out of shoe boxes and litter their apartment,
making it ripe for cleaning. They are under the protection of sports
fanatic crime boss Rory (Vas Blackwood) and his gang of dapper thugs.
There's also a subplot concerning the theft of two antique guns from
a country house as well as a number of offbeat characters who wander
in and out to keep the plot racing along, such as the pothead who
wakes up just long enough to spray the room with machine gun bullets
and the man who first fences the guns. A guest appearance by Sting
as Eddie's bar-owning father adds to the large cast. The ensemble
acting is as solid as it needs to be for this kind of film, and a
number of the actors enjoy pushing their parts just a little over
the top. The biggest difficulty is keeping the characters straight—is
this the original gang or the gang that robbed the original gang,
or is this one of the other gangs?
In the second third of the film, director Guy Ritchie
begins pulling the threads of these stories together into the interactions
and coincidences that lead to the massive shoot-out that partially
clears the stage of characters and lets him wrap it all up in the
last third, except, of course, for the last scene, which will either
charm audiences or drive them crazy.
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is a high-octane,
exuberant comedy that never slows down. It's pure entertainment of
the violent kind, and it may very well be as successful in the U.S.
as in England. (All films reviewed are available from local video
stores.)
