Luck, Irony and Two Old Shotguns

Rating: 10/10 (24 April 2008)

After being in love with "Snatch", my cousin and I began to look out for this film and finally we saw it on a bootleg of the imported DVD. That was about 3 or 4 years ago and the last year I saw for the very first time the Region 4 DVD so I get my own copy of the film and enjoyed for the second time. Last week I saw "The Transporter" and I decide to enjoy once again this magnificent work so I'm here writing, after a third view, my thoughts about Guy Ritchie's first feature film.
The story introduce you this four friends: Eddie (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Bacon (Jason Statham) and Soap (Dexter Fletcher). They have different ways to get money but finally they decide to enter in a big game. They put together £100,000 to play a card game, taking advantage of the great abilities of Eddie. But they are playing against "Hatchet" Harry (P.H. Moriarty) who is a porn king and now they owns him £500,000 and Harry is the kind of man that if you own him you better pay him. I really love how the story makes that you care and, at the same time, feel sorry for the four friends because they put in that card game all of their savings and now they need a real miracle to get the money in only one week. At the same time were are watching this, we also watch some other characters that, if you think first, doesn't have anything related with the four friends but you will see how little is the world. There are many secondary characters but basically there are just group of friends and partners: the drug growers, the criminal neighbors of Eddie, the two guys from the North and Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) with his son, Little Chris. And all know Harry and Rory (Vas Blackwood) that are the "big bosses". There are two more characters that are the ones that connect everything, specially the second one: Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean) and Nick the Greek (Stephen Marcus). This story might look a little complicated with a lot of connected subplots but the way that is shown is just perfect, enjoyable and easy to follow. The style of Guy Ritchie is just so cool, for example the first sequence is just brilliant, and there are many funny situations just as many ironies in the entire story, being the one in the very end the biggest of all.
Cast: Just brilliant. Eddie could be the main character and Nick Moran is just great. Jason Statham is great but he has a support role as part of the four friends so he doesn't stand out of the four because the four are a team and are great. As I watched first "Snatch" I found here many familiar faces like Vinnie Jones and Alan Ford. The last one has a very small role as the bartender but he is also the narrator with his unique voice. Also Sting appears as Eddie's father making a really good performance and "the hardest man in Britain", Lenny McLean, is terrific as Barry.
Conclusion: Well for me this is nothing but a brilliant film. Great story, great characters, funny situations with a lot of irony. I mention in this comment many times the film "Snatch" and the only reason is because is a similar film, brilliant too so I highly recommend both. In this case "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" deserves a perfect and beautiful 10.