Simply one of the best movies to come out of London.

Rating: 9/10 (1 April 2013)

I would call this movie the "British Pulp Fiction" though it is far better than Pulp Fiction. The plot is quite complex and begins with lots of different strands which are all brought together in a very interesting way: though a quick explanation is that it is about four guys who get one of their lot to play a high-stakes game of poker which he loses. Thus they must get half a million pounds with-in a few days or be slowly cut to pieces.
It is a movie that I can see becoming a cult movie, it has that certain feel to it. The wit in the movie is extremely clever and the directorial techniques quite unique. This movie I would term as experimental, though such movies seem to quite often come out of Britain. America dominates the mainstream market, so other countries need to experiment with their filmmaking to compete. Britain seems to do quite a good job at it.
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is what I would term as a grunge movie. The movie has a very dusky tinge to it and it is set entirely in the East-end of London (well, I can't say for sure as I suspect Harry's Sexshop, and maybe the bar, are located in Soho), a very lower class area. Everybody in the movie are criminals and this is made obvious. Even those who are clean are only clean because they distance themselves from what is happening. None of the characters have any really redeeming qualities, nor do they get through the movie due to any amount of skill. The card player, even though he is very good, could not overcome the camera which was scanning his cards, and as such lost.
This movie delves deep into the criminal underworld of London. It is an underworld where there is no love or compassion but rather people trying to outdo each other. It is a world where only the strong, the smart, and the lucky survive. In fact, only six people do survive: the four card players, and the loan-shark and his kid (not counting the father, but he knows how to keep his nose clean): everybody else winds up dead, including all of the crime lords, and through a stroke of luck, the four guys manage to keep their hands clean.
Some British movies do suck, but this is not one of them. From seeing movies like this, it makes me appreciate the British Cinema a lot more. I could not say if Hong Kong Cinema and British Cinema influenced each other, but there is something that sets it apart from their American counterparts. It is also interesting to note that in the 1998 version of the British Oscars, Titanic was not mentioned once.