Jogos, Trapaças e Dois Canos Fumegantes

I'm not sure whether to call this a black comedy or a comedy-noir. The story is about four working class lads who have each managed to save up 25,000 pounds to spot their card-shark friend for a high-stakes poker game with "Hatchet" Harry, the local gangster.

Unfortunately, Harry's game is rigged and the four end up owing Harry half a million pounds, with just one week to come up with the cash. What ensues is a set of schemes, counter-schemes, rip-offs, and bad/good luck that demand you pay attention. On several occasions I had to pause the video just to take stock of which gang was planning what.

The final thirty minutes of the film, as the plots all collide and overlap, turn set-piece shoot outs into comedic punchlines. The comedy is driven by exploding our expectations of what are otherwise pretty standard scenes from the film-noir genre.

The acting is strong and the script very tight. Although I am not normally a fan of voice overs, this one informs without spoiling the action. And I liked the use of the slow-motion to disrupt the action and keep me paying attention.

While this film may not be for everyone, if you enjoy a darker pallette, this may be right up your alley.

Best comedy in years, friend turned me on to this hilarious comedy of errors and glad she did. The film is damn near flawless, forces you to pay attention to the twists and turns through it's witty dialogue. Wonderfully photographed with brilliant camerawork but not overdone. Worth several sittings and we could learn alot in Hollywood from this one....

Guy Ritchie's hip, highly stylized 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' is a truly remarkable film, not only for its appropriately pyrotechnic camera work, but also for its seemingly flawless, puzzle-perfect script/screenplay. While the picture's main focus is on a group of lads who invest money in a high-stakes, rigged card game and lose, the broader story concerns approximately eight different groups of criminals whose paths cross (more> than once, in some cases) during various illegal pursuits: money, guns, drugs, even revenge. The film is quite violent, both on and off screen, but it's also uniformly humorous throughout. It's important to note that the four central characters (a cook, a card sharp, and a couple of guys who sell "discounted" items) are interested only in acquiring the money to pay off their enormous debt; they kill no one. The same applies to the laid-back college boys who "grow copious amounts of ganja".

The cast is comprised of mostly young, veteran, male actors. In fact, the only female in the film doesn't even speak, though she handles a machine gun fairly well. Sting appears briefly in several scenes as a bar-owning father figure. While his secondary performance is solid, as usual, it is also unmemorable. The soundtrack is first-rate, from the 60's hits of James Brown to the contemporary beats of London's underground. The groovy, pulsating music and lyrics are often succinctly synchronized with the action and dialogue in the film, creating a theatrical rhythm that is fairly uncommon in cinema (from any period).

Critics and audiences over the years have often dismissed stylized camera work as pretentious and unnecessary, stating that it detracts from the story, bogs it down, or pads it; however, the film medium has the luxury of actually "displaying" a story for its audience, unlike the written word alone. It's what the medium is all about -- it's VISUAL. Hence, one of the reasons a filmmaker chooses such visual displays is to "brand" his or her work, in the same way as writers like Cummings, Hemingway or Joyce did with their medium. It's hard to imagine a cinema without Hitchcock, Kubrick, or Scorsese to represent it. To this end, Ritchie has taken his first step in establishing his own brand. His energetic, ultra-contemporary camera work incorporates (through a fresh perspective) such devices as slow motion, fast motion, and freeze-frame coupled with narration. It is at times reminiscent of (and actually expands upon) Martin Scorsese's patented visual stylistics and camera movements, like those found in 'Mean Streets' and 'Goodfellas'. But the similarities with Scorsese's work end there.

Critics' endless comparisons of Ritchie's film with the works of Quentin Tarantino and Danny Boyle's 'Trainspotting' stand mostly unwarranted, as these comparisons take away from the inventiveness and originality of 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'. Ritchie's film is a much more involved, complex, layered work than the aforementioned comparisons. While Tarantino's films are very strong on dialogue, screenplay, and editing, they often lack creative camera work and direction. Boyle's 'Trainspotting' does have a resembling "feel" to 'LS&TSB', but aside from its Great Britain origins, there really is no need for comparison. 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' is essential viewing.

Guy Ritchie has a skill: the skill to take multi-layered gangster plots, weave them together, and come out with a fabric of the finest quality. I first watched "Snatch", which came after this film. Loved it. Watch this film, which had a similar set-up (the interwoven gangster theme). Loved it. As far as I'm concerned, if Ritchie can maintain this level of creativity, he can keep on making these films until the end of time. His characters are so well scripted and the actors so well chosen, there is a three-dimensional quality to this film, as if you can almost taste the sulfur in the shotgun blasts.

To describe the plot is difficult, unless we choose one character as the hero and the rest as the anti-heroes... but that's hard to do. While certain people seem to be on our side, they're all equally involved in the plot. Kids playing poker, a porn king who cheats at cards, Big Chris the hired thug, the stereotyped black ganja dealer, Barry the Baptist... all great characters.

Another aspect of Ritchie's films is that instead of good vs. evil, he offers us bad versus evil. All the characters do bad things: steal, drink, smoke dope and kill if necessary. But some are simply "bad" (people who would be morally upright in a different setting) and others are "evil" (no moral code at all, black all the way to the core of their heart). This almost non-dichotomy is probably not unique to Ritchie, but is something he excels in. Highest possible recommendation, you nonce!

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels features a lot of local slang and Cockney accents and, while it is far from impossible to comprehend, you will be doing yourself a favour if you follow the dialogue in subtitles. In fact, even the unbearably annoying 'hard-of-hearing' option is welcomed. It follows a group of four very "working class" blokes as they try to help their friend Eddie (Nick Moran) get out of an enormous debt he amassed one night, playing high-roller with a local gang-boss that cheated. The lads resort to illegal ways to get the money, like ripping off their pot-selling next-door neighbours.

This is a really excellent film—entertaining; funny, exciting, and extremely realistic. The style is gorgeous. In fact, I have nothing bad at all to say about it except that it may not be everyone's cup of tea. You also have to be patient with it. That may have been my problem the first time I saw it because I can remember mixing up quite a few people when not paying attention.. Still, the realism of the situations make up for its occasionally slow pace and dialogue-driven plot. For instance, none of these working-class guys know how to handle a gun when they need to, and the result is hilarious. They're not goofy by any means, but they're just normal guys that struggle with the life of crime that they are forced to turn to in order to repay Eddie's debt. Also note the fantastic use of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges. 8/10