You're all wrong - it's terrible!

Rating: 1/10 (5 March 1999)

The praise which has been heaped upon Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels is more an indicator of the power of hype than anything else - the film is just plain awful! It is so frustrating to see how the media have built it up so much that people are afraid to declare it a pile of poo, for fear of being uncool...
I present my case thus: 1) the acting is almost uniformly dreadful - real school play stuff. Can anyone out there honestly say that this is otherwise? 2) the script is equally crap. The story is an amalgamation of every gangster film you've ever seen, totally unoriginal, and the characters are so jaw-droppingly cliched as to stagger belief! I could just about take the Cockney wide boys, the naive students and the nasty neighbours, but what on earth were those two Northerners all about????? 3) I'm told that there were elements of comedy in the film - I, frankly, found it as amusing as those terrible, bland sitcoms we Brits are so good at making these days. I've seen more sophisticated humour in an episode of Sesame Street! 4) and the direction was way over the top - if you want to know how to be flash, Mr Ritchie, I suggest you go back and watch the real masters (again, since you so obviously pinched many bits straight from the likes of Scorsese..!).
In conclusion, it's no points for LS&TSB, and a bottle of cider for the marketing men, who seemed to convince enough of you that this was a "with it" film.
Cool? There's more cool in a single frame of Get Carter, or The Long Good Friday than in the neverending 105 minutes of this rubbish...
Say "NO" to peer pressure, and admit the unmistakable truth about this awful piece of work!