Comedy Caper And Crime Guarantees a Good Time

Rating: 8/10 (5 December 2016)

If you combine Quentin Tarantino movies with a bit of Marx Brothers slapstick humour you get "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". All you have to do is picture Chico severing your fingers. The quirkiness may be fun to watch, but this comedy crime caper is overwhelmingly wallowing in its complexities and is handled quite efficiently. It comes as an obvious trait that Guy Ritchie used to direct commercials if you noticed a scene where a man is throwing vegetables into the water and we get a close-up to the bottom of the pot.
The plot focuses on a poker star from the rough side of London's East End named Eddy (Nick Moran) who gets hired by three alliances to gamble up his profits to a high stakes game against Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty), who is a kingpin in the gambling a porn industry. Harry uses dirty tactics to win which leaves Eddy in a bind and Harry's guard Benny the Baptist (Lenny McLean) gives these suckers three options,either pay up, take over the pub that's owned by Eddy's father JD (Sting) or get your fingers severed.
So Eddy and his friends snoop on the neighbours in their apartment who happen to be crooks with a master plan to rob from a rich druggie. All this is happening, Barry hires two bumbling thieves to confiscate some authentic antique guns for Harry . The guns wind up in Eddy and his gang, rob the drug money and then the rest of the way needs no further explaining. Or do you if you want me to give away spoilers which I won't.
The movie turned out to be a very successful film back in Britain. In North America it came out first at the Sundance Film Festival. Although it was entertaining fun, you could still get lost in the shuffle due to the confusing plot and the English lingo in a very British film. But after a second viewing, I understood the dialogue better and plot felt less convoluted.
It's safe to say the characters were a little miscast due to the fact that they might be a bit too young and inexperienced for a very gritty film. Unlike Tarantino who in "Reservoir Dogs" used veteran performers in his film. Eddy's gang comes across as a bit too youthful to be dealing with scumbags or even running around London with these scamps. And with the neighbours being druggies, it's hard to come by as to who is who.
The more convincing cast members are from the antagonists Harry and Barry and even impressive was the character who played Big Chris (soccer star Vinnie Jones) who was notorious for choking a rival by the balls. But through the mindset of the East End it looks believable in the settings being that it is dark, cold and the scoundrels that surround the area add to the authenticity that London is not all blessed with royalty and fish n chips.
In spite of its dreariness, there is a lot of excitement that comes with this movie. The soundtrack featuring mostly rock music is the perfect choice of the atmosphere. The narration keeps the story to a steady flow and is not afraid to add runaway gags if feel the need to. When Eddy and his gang enter into a pub we see a man in flames staggering at the door. They stare at him concernedly, nod their heads and walk in. The pub they walk into is called Samoa Joe's a spoof of "Pulp Fiction" with Big Kahuna Burgers and and Jack Rabbit Slim's restaurant and they're also sipping drinks with the little umbrellas too.
There's a lot of Tarantino influences this movie has to provide and spotting the references can almost feel like a game. That and along with other Hong Kong based film and British noir films of the 1950's. The closest this film comes to a striking resemblance is the 1950 British noir film "Night and the City" which is a criminal caper set in the East End and a high stakes kingpin hires a buffed up bodyguard to do his dirty work.
As the film comes to the close you try to decipher what had just transpired. As it turns out the style fairly outweighs the substance and it never tries to deny such claims. We don't care much about the characters (though I was intrigued by the character Barry the Baptist over anyone else). The film's humour factor lies within the style of utilizing freeze frames, witty subtitles and speed-up and slow-motion angles. But it's still a fun slapdash film with exuberance and intrigue so if you can't encode to their English dialect, the characters add enough excitement to overcome that obstacle.