A great example of the UK's superiority to the USA...

Rating: Null/10 (17 February 2001)

England has Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels... what does America have? Pulp Fiction. Says it all really. Unlike Pulp Fiction, LSTSB is actually funny, entertaining, and it coincides with things that happen in real life. The score music makes it as funny as hell, and the dialogue is so riveting that listening to the film from start to finish is almost mandatory. When was the last time you saw an American crime story with these attributes?
At it's heart, LSTSB is a story of four young men who invest their money in a card game that turns out to be rigged, and they wind up owing five times their investment. They then have a week to come up with the cash before they start losing fingers. But what really makes this film is the myriad of stories that are interwoven with this central theme. The grass-growing hippies, the thugs who plan to rob them, and the insane black crimelord who actually employs them are the main ones here. Then there's the bumbling idiots who are employed by the crimelord our four heroes owe money to, who are entrusted with the task of stealing antique shotguns. Oh, and let's not forget the machinations of Big Chris, who spends most of the film being so polite to the people he's employed to rough up that it immediately brings up images of "Chopper" Read. Trying to find good guys amongst this lot is somewhat like trying to find a good Tarantino film.
The best part of the film is undoubtedly Rory Breaker's conversation with Nick The Greek, the one in which he finds an affinity for repeating "I'll kill ya!" several times. But unlike most American films where everyone is vying for their unfair share of clever dialogue, everyone gets a chance to say something funny in this film and it all flows together so smoothly like a mid-1970s David Bowie album.
The best way to watch LSTSB is in groups, with the sort of people who don't normally watch British movies. They're usually the ones who laugh the most due to the surprise factor.