Nasty Taste in the Mouth

Rating: 4/10 (24 March 2016)

Gangster films have never had the same pedigree in Britain that they have long enjoyed in America. Part of the reason is that the formative years of Hollywood in the twenties and early thirties coincided with the growth of organised crime fuelled by Prohibition, a period when the doings of Al Capone and his contemporaries provided a rich source of inspiration for film-makers. Another part of the reason is that during this period the British Board of Film Censors tended to discourage home- made gangster movies. This form of censorship owed little to moral concerns about violence- the BBFC were quite happy to allow cinemas to show American crime flicks- and a good deal to political considerations. British governments, of all political complexions, liked to play down any suggestion that the country had a serious organised crime problem. (And, by American standards, it didn't).
There have been a few isolated British gangster films which have achieved classic status- "Brighton Rock", "Get Carter", "The Long Good Friday"- but nothing on the scale of, say, the "Godfather" trilogy or "Road to Perdition". There have also been a few great British films noirs, but they often (as in, say, "It Always Rains on Sunday" or "The Third Man") featured criminals who operated as lone wolves rather than as part of a mob.
"Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is another, more recent, British gangster film for which some have claimed classic status. The title is a play on the phrase "lock, stock and barrel", literally referring to three parts of a gun but having the colloquial meaning in British of "everything" or "the whole lot". There is also a reference to the use by criminals of double-barrelled shotguns as weapons, and to a plot by one of the characters in the film to acquire a pair of valuable antique guns.
The plot is a complicated one, involving several interconnected sub- plots and several gangs of criminals. The main story involves Eddy, a young member of one of these gangs who loses £500,000 in a rigged poker game. Needing money urgently pay off his debts, he and his friends decide to rob another gang, who operate from the flat next door. This other gang, in turn, are planning to rob a gang of drug dealers. "Hatchet" Harry, the gangster to whom Eddy owes the money, is also the one with his eye on the antique guns, and engages Gary and Dean, a pair of Liverpudlian criminals, to steal them. (The two prove hopelessly incompetent; the film was obviously made from a London viewpoint and Guy Ritchie was using them to make a few digs at Northerners in general, and the people of Liverpool in particular. Gary and Dean habitually call all Southerners "southern fairies", even though those they insult in this way are generally far more ruthlessly efficient than they are).
I have found it difficult to take Ritchie seriously as a director ever since I saw his "Swept Away", an appropriately titled vanity project which had the unintended consequence of sweeping away his then wife Madonna's acting career. (She has not dared to make another film since). "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is certainly not as bad as that steaming pile of trash- very few films in cinematic history ever have been- but on the other hand I find myself unable to acclaim it as the classic which some people regard it as.
There are several problems with the film. The first is that the storyline is over-complicated and difficult to follow- it is hard to keep track of who is in which gang, who is planning to rob whom, and how, when and why. The second is that the film never really decides what it wants to be. At times, particularly during the scenes involving Gary and Dean or the effeminate if murderous drug dealer Rory Breaker, it is so far over the top that it seems more like a black comedy than a serious crime drama. At other times, particularly during those scenes that end with a pile of corpses littering the floor, it seems very serious indeed. The third main problem is that there are no characters with whom the viewer can identify. Apart from a young child and a traffic warden who appears briefly, just about every character we see is either a criminal or an associate of criminals. And that's not "criminal" as in "loveable rogue". That's "criminal" as in "homicidal thug". We are invited to identify with Eddy and his friends, largely because they (unlike most of the other characters) never actually kill anybody, but as their activities include drug-dealing and robbery I found such identification difficult to accomplish.
The film was rather better on the acting side; there is a very assured performance from Vinnie Jones, as Harry's debt collector Big Chris. The film marked the start of a new career as an actor for Jones, a former Wales international footballer, who has gone on to act in a number of movies and television programmes since. (It also saw the film debut of another international sportsman turned actor, the one-time diver Jason Statham). I also liked P. H. Moriarty as Harry and the late Lenny McLean as his enforcer Barry the Baptist, whose nickname refers not to his religious affiliation but to his habit of drowning people. Nevertheless, I found this a film which is just too blasé and insouciant about needless criminal violence. It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. 4/10