entertaining, high energy crime comedy

Rating: 8/10 (13 August 1999)

"Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is a fun, highspirited and ingeniously plotted caper film from the "good crooks vs. bad crooks" school of crime drama. This British comedy plunges us into a dizzying maelstrom of doublecrossing petty thieves, drug dealers, gamblers and assorted other criminal lowlifes whose paths cross in the streets and alleyways of London in clever and often fatal ways.
The complex plot almost defies description. Suffice it to say the film focuses on a quartet of likable smalltime hoodlums who amass a decent stake from the fencing of stolen property and decide to risk it all on a high stakes card game with a notorious gangster named Henry, who has rigged the game, unbeknownst to Eddie, the cardsharp of the group. When Eddie loses the money, the stage is set for a wild series of plots, counterplots, crosses and double crosses, all executed by writer/director Guy Ritchie with a refreshing cinematic flair that includes frenetic pacing and editing, clever use of slow and fast motion photography, and barely perceptible freeze framing, all backed up by a dynamic score humming along on the soundtrack.
As a writer, Ritchie fills the screen with a delighful gallery of eccentric, offbeat and slightly off-kilter characters. These are all too numerous to mention, but special note should be taken of Henry's chief henchman, Chris, who politely scolds his young son and partner in crime for his use of unseemly language as he bashes the brains out of one of Henry's delinquent customers or insists on his buckling up for safety as they take off on one of their wild rides through ths crime-infested streets of London.
Despite it's '90's level of graphic violence, the film strikes echoes of classic British crime comedies of the gentler 1950's. It reminds one, in fact, of "The Ladykillers", wherein the bad crooks manage to eliminate each other through a maze of comic misunderstandings, leaving the "good" crooks thoughtfully untouched. Not that they don't learn their lesson, though, for, in the high stakes world of doubledealing criminals, our heroes discover that it takes a ruthless old pro to ultimately come out on top. And that's as it should be in the world of crime drama.