| Imagine that you
talk your three best friends into giving
you their life savings for you to wager
in a can’t-miss high-stakes poker
game. Imagine that, despite your
remarkable card-playing skills, you
somehow lose everything and even end up
in debt to a fellow named
"Hatchet" Harry, a local crime
boss and porn king that once beat a man
to death with a gigantic black rubber
marital aid. Imagine Harry tells you that
if you don’t cough up his cash
within a week, he’ll send his
henchman, Barry the Baptist, to start
chopping off the digits of you and your
friends. That’s the
basic plot of Guy Ritchie’s
exhilarating big-screen debut, which was
a critical and box office hit in England
and the darling of this year’s
Sundance Film Festival. Ritchie’s
inspired directing technique, especially
during the aforementioned card game
(where it almost feels like you were
actually punched in the stomach), is
actually one-upped by his splendid
script, which also includes a drug
kingpin, a group of degenerates led by a
guy named "Dog," a stoned group
of pot growers, two idiot hitmen, a
father-and-son debt-collecting team, a
pair of antique shotguns and a bartender
played by Sting.
Sound confusing?
It is for a while, but Ritchie ties
everything up so deliciously in the last
ten minutes that you can’t help grin
as the cast is hilariously thinned out by
a series of misunderstandings and bad
timing. What starts out as a hodgepodge
of Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting
and Reservoir Dogs slowly becomes
as enjoyable and visually stylish as the
films from which Lock, Stock draws
its comparisons. For fans from across the
pond, look for notorious soccer bad-boy
Vinnie Jones as the debt-collector Big
Chris and the late bare-knuckle fighting
champ P.H. Moriarty as Barry the Baptist,
a man who earned his name for his
drowning interrogation style. The film
also has a great soundtrack featuring The
Stooges, The Stone Roses and James Brown.
Produced by Trudie Styler (aka Mrs.
Sting).
READ AN
INTERVIEW WITH VINNIE JONES HERE!
1:45 -
for extreme violence, adult language and
brief nudity
|
