Irritating and witless

Rating: 3/10 (30 June 2002)

Guy Ritchie has gone beyond mere Tarantino imitation and found his own unique voice in crime pictures, but unfortunately it's an irritating, witless, virulent voice. Sure, this movie is colorful and snazzy, but I think everyone gets snookered by the British accents and machine-gun delivery of the lines to realize that nobody says anything remotely intelligent. A lot of British humor is very good, but there's also a tendency to just have everyone be mean and nasty to each other and pretend that that's somehow the pinnacle of wit. Don't mistake flash for substance.