It's a deal, it's a steal......

Rating: 9/10 (1 May 2009)

After losing out big time in a rigged card game, and ending up owing half a million pound to a mobster. Eddie and his three friends have seven days to find the money to pay off the debt, or face the consequences.
It seems a little crass to state the bleeding obvious, but Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels is the British blood brother to Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. It's also that particular films equal and the best, and most successful, of the post Dogs imitations. Guy Ritchie's first full length picture has a knowing vitality about it, oddly seeming fresh even tho it harks back to crime movies back in yore. The plot plays out as an amalgamation of crooks and wide boy Londoners whizz around robbing and beating each other with care free abandon, all of course armed with cockney swagger to go with their respective weapons. On the surface it looks quite complex in structure, but Ritchie ties it all together with brio and a sheer belief that these characters are capable of winning over the audience. And they do. The violence in the piece is tough and at times wince inducing, but another laugh, or a beggars belief scene is just around the corner, and on it goes. Till the collage unfolds and the ending is nigh, and here Ritchie gives us the final nudge in the ribs to close the sale of the century. 9/10