Guy Ritchie brings it home

Rating: Null/10 (24 May 2018)

Ritchie's feature film debut and very similar in themes and outlook to his next film, Snatch. A film about dubious criminals, simple souls, odd happenstances, bloody brutality and tongue-in-cheek crime comedy.
The story goes that a group of four friends end up owing money to the biggest, meanest and baddest crime lord in town. To solve this conundrum they decide to rob their next door neighbours, who just happen to be gangsters planning a big heist against a local bunch of weed cultivators. There's also a pair of antique shotguns floating around. Hence the name.
Ritchie's signature flair shines through even this early on. The film is full of inventive camera angles, nonchalant character reactions and certain attitude that to me resembles an odd mixture of pro wrestling and 40s pulp adventure. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is a Character with a capital C. Everyone is playing a role, everyone is posturing, yet everyone is at least a bit clueless and oddly sincere in their interactions. It's at the same time ridiculous and utterly endearing.
Still, compared to Snatch, this is a lesser film. The plot is nowhere near as snappy, the cinematography doesn't have the reproductive organs to go all the way and for some reason the whole film uses this awful brown filter, which makes the film look like it crawled through the London sewer system.
Is it worth a watch? Absolutely! It's just that Snatch pulls it off even better. Watch both if you can, but if you can only watch one, this is not the one.