(1998)
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Director: Guy
Ritchie
Executive producer: Stephen Marks
Writer: Guy
Ritchie
Music: David
A. Hughes and John Murphy
Cinematography: Tim Maurice-Jones
expandable
Lock Stock and Two smoking barrels has become a National Treasure.
When four friends find themselves in deep trouble after a crooked card game (if they don't want to lose some of their fingers, they have an enormous debt to pay in a week time to the local gang-land boss and porn king Harry 'The Hatchet' Lonsdale), they overhear their neighbours in the next flat plotting to hold up a group of pot growers. They decide that they will steal the money from their neighbours….
Some sequences really catch the eye; the opening featuring Jason Statham's famous street salesman speech (partly improvised by Statham, an ex-dodgy goods salesman). Also the scene where the gangsters break into the cannabis factory and you have that lovely slow motion shot of the strung out girl with the Bren gun!
These sequences are added to nicely bu the scroing and in particular the build up to the heist. But the star of this movie, is the script. Ritchie goes in full throttle on the Cockney dialect and sheer flamboyance of the dialogue. The use of accent from the cockney contingent is complemented well by scousers Gary and Barry. Ritchie throws the camera around with glee, adds a catchy, populist soundtrack and lets the dirty and flirty gangsters of London banter away. And when you add to this great script some fine humour and some excellent music, than you know that you have a winner.
Some hip cameos and sterling lead foursome help the whole thing to raise a notch. Were it not for the presence of Lennie McLean, Sting and Danny John Jules, and the four bickering main actors then this film would have been as poor as the series that became of it. But the four leading men do a fantastic job with the comedy provided by the script. Nick Moran should have made a good career out of his role as Ed, the card shark with a sly tongue, and a quick eye. Jason Statham plays Bacon as a sarcastic rogue. Jason Flemyng is cheeky, adventurous, would be entrepeneur Tom. And Dexter Fletcher gives it his all in his role as clean living, yet slightly unnerving performance as Soap.
