I am a fan of Guy Ritchie. Snatch is one of my personal favorite movies and I think Mickey is just one of the best characters committed to celluloid in the past few decades. I have been in a Guy Ritchie funk since Snatch came out; sure he did Swept Away and Revolver but neither one of those films got much love…and Swept Away was just ripped apart by everyone. In short, Madonna killed Guy’s career. Those of us that have had that opinion about the Madonna/Guy marriage of course find it funny that Rocknrolla has come out at roughly the same time as the announcement of Guy and Madonna’s split. We’ve all been hoping that this split signals the return of Guy Ritchie to the cinema he does so well.
Rocknrolla is vaguely similar in concept to some of Guy Ritchie’s other films. It takes an odd assortment of characters all somehow involved in the criminal underground in Britain and their paths interconnect and try to pull them all down a ugly and dangerous spiral that will end in their deaths. In this outing One Two, Mumbles and Handsome Bob are the Wild Bunch a trio of moderately successful thugs. Stella is creative accountant to Uri who gives work to One Two under the nose of Uri who is trying to use Stella’s skills to get money to Lenny. Lenny is a blue-collar thug if you will who makes his dime off real estate scams and doesn’t see his way of doing things as old. Archie is Lenny’s enforcer who is trying to track down Lenny’s step son Johnny, a supposedly dead junkie/rocker managed by Mickey and Roman. There is really no way to truly sum up this film’s plot. But if you’ve seen a Ritchie film you can put the pieces together and figure out at least the style that the story will be told in.
While I enjoyed Rocknrolla it is by no means a typical Guy Ritchie film. All the elements are there, and you enjoy watching all the pieces get put in place and whacked back out of order. However, the prevailing feeling that I got out of this film is that Guy is stretching; it’s been eight years since Snatch came out and it feels like Guy is a little unsure of himself. This is not a bad thing however, the film is enjoyable, well done and something that no one except Guy Ritchie could do. It put me in a mood where I enjoyed the film and I know going out of it that Guy is coming back and his next movie is going to be even more like the Guy Ritchie I know and love.
One of the things I do love about Guy Ritchie’s films is that he takes at least one actor in every film that I love and makes them play a character that I couldn’t picture them in. In Snatch that is Brad Pitt and Mickey. In Rocknrolla that is Gerard Butler. I adore Butler and while One Two isn’t as out there of a character as Mickey I just didn’t quite see Butler as a fit in Ritchie’s world – I was wrong. Butler is fabulous.
Go support Guy Ritchie. He doesn’t really need the money, but I want him to keep making gangster movies because that is his genre.
Director & Writer: Guy Ritchie
One Two: Gerard Butler
Mumbles: Idris Elba
Handsome Bob: Tom Hardy
Johnny Quid: Toby Kebbell
Roman: Ludacris/Chris Bridges
Uri: Karel Roden
Councilor: Jimi Mistry
Stella: Thandie Newton
Mickey: Jeremy Piven
Archie: Mark Stong
Lenny: Tom Wilkinson
Archie: People ask the question... what's a RocknRolla? And I tell 'em - it's not about drugs, drums, and hospital drips, oh no. There's more there than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life - some the money, some the drugs, other the sex game, the glamour, or the fame. But a RocknRolla, oh, he's different. Why? Because a real RocknRolla wants the f---ing lot.
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