By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * )
... or, as it's become known, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels II. Guy Ritchie's new film is a lot — an awful lot — like Guy Ritchie's old film. But, then, a lot — an awful lot — of people liked
Guy Ritchie's old film.
This time London's assorted and imported lowlifes include Frankie Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro before his Traffic cop), who steals a diamond in Antwerp and returns to London. A Russian named Boris the Blade (Rade Sherbedgia) and an American gangster named Avi (Dennis Farina) try to part him from it. Literally. It's in a case handcuffed to Frankie's wrist.
Not quite across the other side of town a boxer named Gorgeous George is knocked out and two shady promoters find themselves owing money to a crime lord. Desperate to find a winner so they can raise the cash to pay their way out of trouble, they recruit a gypsy knuckler (Brad Pitt).
He comes from a fight club (promise that was the last movie joke, but that's how Ritchie constructs his films, or films his constructs) that London gamblers don't know. Pitt lives in a gypsy community that offers interesting insights into lower socio-economics in the British capital. I won't go into too many details because this page has a family readership.
Sorry, there is one more movie joke. Because American audiences complained they couldn't understand the Cockney accents in LS&2SB, Ritchie had to add subtitles. So this time, the American Pitt speaks a gypsy dialect that none of the Brits in the movie can understand.
A rowdy, larger-than-life, grown-ups' cartoon of a movie — Brendan Behan might have written the screenplay — that an awful lot of people will like.
Running time: 103 mins
Rental: Today
