Pointless.

Rating: 1/10 (19 December 2008)

What was the point of that? I'm going to go do my laundry.
End of review. 0/10.
Okay, I really wish I could end there, because that's all the credit Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels deserves. It's one of the few movies I've even seen that is so bad it's actually below me to sit here and write a negative review. I've watched a lot of overrated films, but I've never once gone as far as to call a single movie "The Most Overrated Film of All Time", simply because there are a lot of movies that could be called that. Naming one single movie "The Most Overrated Film of All Time" is just ludicrous. But I am seriously reconsidering my own line of logic right now and giving this film that title. That is how much I simply cannot understand the hype and mass love for this film. At all. It's like a movie that should be on the bottom 100 movies of all time, but then somehow, some way, it gets loved by the public. I simply can't comprehend it.
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a generic film noir piece set in a generic film noir world with generic film noir "quirky" characters and a generic film noir plot. Everything, every last thing, is copy/pasted from otherbettermovies. Critics trash movies all the time for even minor unoriginality, yet this has to be one of the most unoriginal movies of all time and it's critically acclaimed? It's impossible not to see the unabashed rip-off scenes from Pulp Fiction, most notably. Not to mention the Reservoir Dogs inspired scenes. By the middle of the movie I literally forgot which wannabe Quentin Tarantino movie I was watching, because I've seen so many of them they all just blur together because they're all basically the same movie. They all repeat the same variations of Pulp Fiction quotes. They all have the same basic drug-kill-money plot. They all think they're so genius because they have one sub-par plot twist that isn't even a plot twist because we expect it in movies like this.
Look, I like film noir, too, but I don't love everything just because it's a stylish crime movie. It has to be different. Film noir started back in the 40s, and I think it says something when the only few films in the genre that become anything more than a small cult success are the ones that are truly genre-defining and added much-needed originality to the genre, not the ones that just tag around the bandwagon. In other words, I can see some people possibly finding Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels entertaining if you're a genre fan. But overrating it to the point that its at is simply stupid. It's generic. It's exactly like everything you've seen before. It's just a frozen McDonald's hamburger in the generic fast food storehouse. Get over it.
If you're not a film noir fan, don't bother watching it at all. You'll fall asleep. If you are, and you're in a good mood, I suggest you try it. If the first five minutes bore you as much as they did me, just know that the rest of the movie doesn't get any better. The jokes are the same jokes you've heard in all the other genre pieces. There is nothing good that can be said about the acting. Some of it is borderline terrible. It isn't cool. The pansy camera cutting away from every single act violenceeven as tame a punch in the mouth!gets so annoying I wished more than once I could turn it off. It isn't cool.
There isn't a single thing about this movie that is likable or entertaining unless you get it up by watching generic middle-aged men trying to be cool.
I'm done.
This film noir fan has officially given up on the entire genre. I'm done. Instead of ripping-off Pulp Fiction a hundred more times, why don't directors actually do what Pulp Fiction did? Bring originality to the tired genre.
0/10