LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Comic chaos in the criminal class.
We have seen this sort of thing before, but it
remains amusing. Six different groups of people,
all on the shady side of the law, keep bumping into
each other. Our four main characters owe money to
one so steal from another who are stealing from yet
another. The script manages to juggle all six so
they are each in constant motion. Rating: 6 (0 to
10), +1 (-4 to +4)
LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS is the kind of farce we have seen before. It is a comedy of chaos. This sort of comedy puts enough groups of people together in a script, none knowing what the others are doing and (perhaps) the audience can follow what is going on, but you can reasonably expect that none of the characters has a clue. Particularly good comedies in this vein are Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS and John Landis's OSCAR.
The plot of LOCK, STOCK, AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS works like a well-oiled machine set on high-speed, with everybody doing things to everybody else and nobody being sure who is doing what to whom. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Four young London low-lifes figure they have a good shot at getting rich if they can get into a high stakes poker game. They get together 100,000 pounds. What they did not count on was that the game was rigged and that they would end up owing 500,000 pounds. And they have one week to get it. Luckily a possibility presents itself. Their next-door neighbors are planning to rob an urban marijuana farmer. Our group plans to steal the proceeds of that crime. But that is not all that is happening. All told there are about six different groups of people, all criminal in some ways, running around bumping into each other, double-crossing each other, and shooting each other up.
Everybody is doing something illegal in this part of London; it goes with the turf. Set in a part of London where the law is something of an irrelevancy, this frantic farce is the first outing for 30-year- old writer and director Guy Ritchie. Everyone here is a criminal, but at least he is an eloquent one. As has been the style for crime films since PULP FICTION, the dialog leans to the clever and inventive side and away, far away, from realism. Everybody knows that few real thugs, and certainly not the ones this far down the ladder, are as eloquent and as engaging to hear as the ones in this film. If they were this bright, they would be in a less hazardous profession. But then the filmmaker's first responsibility is to entertain. Some Americans will have problems penetrating the thick accents that unfortunately obscure some of the funniest lines.
Most of the actors have good credentials in British films, though they may be less familiar in this country. One exception is a small part for Sting. Supplementing the cast are some particularly ugly actors, apparently by the credits supplied by a special agency dedicated to providing ugly actors.
The film has considerably more violence than an Alec Guinness English crime comedy would have and some of it may cut against the humor, but Guy Ritchie is a promising director. Rate this a 6 on the0 to 10 scale and a +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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