Very funny, very witty & very excellent British crime caper.

Rating: 9/10 (5 March 2008)

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is set in London where four close friends Eddie (Nick Moran), Bacon (Jason Statham), Tom (Jason Flemying) & Soap (Dezter Fletcher) all chip in £25,000 to make up the £100,000 entrance fee to a big high stakes poker game held by hard as nails villain & crime boss 'Hatchet' Harry Lonsdale (P.H. Moriarty). Eddie is an expert poker player & figures he can make each of them a clear £100,00 profit, if they play their cards right (ha!). Unfortunately 'Hatchet' Harry doesn't like losing & cheats, Eddie not only loses the £100,000 but actually ends up owing 'Hatchet' Harry £500,000 after borrowing it from him to continue in the game. 'Hatchet' Harry is not the sort of person you owe money to, Eddie & his friends must find a way to raise a half a million pounds in the next four days or start losing their fingers...
This English production was written & directed by Guy Ritchie & has already deservedly reached pretty much classic status, in fact it still resides in the IMDb's top 250 films list over ten years since it was originally released & for me it throughly deserves to be there. It's just a wonderfully entertaining, witty, funny, clever British crime caper with bags of personality & at the time it was made originality although in the ten years since it was released many a British film has ripped it off trying to recreate it's success. There are a few things which make Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels so brilliant. First it's just so funny, I have seen Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels several times now & I laugh my head off every time, the really funny dialogue, the spot on performances, the hilarious one liners, the use of funny cockney rhyming slang & the things which happen along with the often bizarre situations the character's find themselves in means there isn't a scene that goes by where something funny doesn't happen or there isn't some instantly quotable insult or one liner. Secondly the character's are great, they have real depth & the good guy's are very likable so you root for them while the bad guy's are real nasty pieces of work so as a consequence you don't root for them, just the way it should be. Then there's the plot which at the time was fresh, new, original, clever, witty, full of great twists & turns & there's certainly plenty going on which rather improbably all come together at the end in a somewhat far fetched way but when a film is as entertaining, clever & downright funny as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels you just tend to go with it. A brilliantly funny British comedy crime caper, one of my favourite films ever & it's as simple & straight forward as that.
Director Ritchie really injects some style, pace & energy into the film with various tricks which never become gimmicky or intrusive & only help tell a brilliantly story with style, originality & panache. Not only did Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels revolutionise the British crime caper genre with it's story telling but it has also influenced plenty of films since with it's slick editing & visual techniques. There's a fantastic soundtrack too, I really can't think of one bad thing to say about Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels which is pretty high praise in itself as I am not easily pleased. There's a fair amount of violence but nothing overly graphic & a lot of it is played for laughs as is the bad language & profanity of which there is a lot. In fact I don't there is a single scene which doesn't involve the use of strong language at some point.
According to the IMDb Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels had a budget of about £960,000 which is simply amazing, a film this good & this stylish for less than a million? Shot on location in & around London Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels were the film debuts of both ex footballer Vinnie Jones & Jason Statham who have both done very well off the back of it. During the final credits the film is dedicated to ex bare knuckle fighter Lenny McClean who played Barry the Baptist & who died of cancer shortly before the film premiered. The acting is great from all involved, there's boyish charm to downright menacing criminal unpleasantness.
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a brilliantly funny, witty, clever & entertaining British crime caper that is a true genre great & one of my own personal favourite films ever. Ritchie followed Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels up with the equally brilliant British crime caper Snatch (2000) a couple of years later.