One to miss!

Rating: Null/10 (20 August 2002)

This is cringingly awful. First of all, Ritchie is blatantly aping Scorsese, and he does so to such an extent that this whole mess of a film could actually pass for a parody on Goodfellas or Meanstreets. Every unique feature of those two films Ritchie swipes and clumsily grafts here. From Goodfellas' introductory "meet the fellas" pan shots to the unique shot of Harvey Keitel's character getting intoxicated and collapsing on the clubroom floor in Meanstreets. Scorsese is so classic and these things are so uniquely his, one would have thought only a high-school film student would actually attempt to copy them. But to copy ALL of them, and then to attempt to graft them into a film of the same genre, well that's plain criminal.

As well as Scorsese, Ritchie also apes Tarantino. Littered across this entire film are unmistakably Tarantino traits such as those witty, slick, fast-talking dialogues and subtle black comedy interludes. Again, to take such uniquely Tarantino features and to do so with such candour is nothing short of criminal.
Carbon copying aside, this film was horrendously flawed from the outset. Yes, Italian American gangsters are hilarious, entertaining, and thoroughly interesting, but no, East End small fries are not; these people are only amusing to themselves, but to the rest of us, they are dull, uninteresting, and remarkably un-charismatic. Yes, films such as the Long Good Friday have captured East End gangsters well, but the mistake they never made was to attempt to characterize them as trendy comedians.
In all, no amount of saturated lens filtering and trendy music video cut aways can hide the fact that this is a cringe-inducing atrocity of a film. My advice, if you want Scorsese or Tarantino, watch their own films, otherwise, stay clear of embarrassing attempts at aping the two such as this.