fast paced and sometimes ridiculous events strung together with seemingly natural developments

Rating: Null/10 (30 November 2002)

Lock, Stock ... and Snatch - these two masterpieces of Guy Ritchie have a common format: fast paced and sometimes ridiculous events strung together with seemingly natural developments. Both of these movies tend to explore the London underworld and they have made me believe that this underworld is really small - any action taken by any goon affects the whole scheme of things. With a plethora of characters, Guy Ritchie spins such a web of events that beyond a point of time, I stopped trying to remember the origin of any development and just soaked in the fast paced beauty of the current sequence - whether it is (black) comedy or gore or a music video on techno-beats. These movies have a very cynical tone - things never go the way they should, or, more correctly, the way the characters would like them to go. The resulting despair leads to more things going wrong until the whole mess of characters clears up with the help of enough bloodshed. Whether it is a squeaky ball eaten up by a mobster's dog resulting in a squeak whenever the dog tries to bark (Snatch) or a gangster making a totally one-sided deal with two street smart goons to steal antique guns (Lock, Stock .) or a self-confident pea-brained monster of a goon beaten up to death by a small gypsy (Snatch) or a whole gang of mobsters annihilated by a victim's drugged girlfriend who stumbles upon a machinegun (Lock, Stock .), the dry and dark humor inherent in almost every sequence makes these movies very different and interesting.
Both the movies have mostly British and talented ensemble of actors. Direction, film editing and presentation are very music-video-ish at times and that adds to the chic and youth nature of the movies.
These movies are recommended for those who a) want to indulge themselves with fast paced, dry and bloody comedy, or b) want to learns the tricks of the trade of London underworld