Anything to declare - yeah, don't go to England

Rating: 7/10 (20 April 2013)

This is probably the fifth time I have seen this film (though I may have watched it more than that, but I cannot say for sure) and I still quite like it, particularly since there are still a number of scenes that cause me to burst out laughing. It also has the classic line 'anything to declare?' 'Yes, don't go to England!' Now, don't get me wrong, I love England, however that one line has stuck in my head that when I arrived in Hong Kong after spending two nights in Bangkok, if anybody at Hong Kong customs were to ask me if I had anything to declare (mind you, you don't actually go through customs in Hong Kong, only if you have something to declare) I was going to say 'yeah, don't go to Thailand' (though I must heed the warning of a friend of mine from my last job not to crack jokes at customs).
This movie is about power, or about perceived power. Throughout the movie it appears that the one man who holds all the cards is a gangster named Bricktop, however this is only an illusion in his mind. He has power because people fear him, and as long as people fear him, he has power. However the problem that he faces is that he cannot always make people fear him, and while he believes that everybody fears him, it is that belief that ends up bringing his downfall.
There is actually a lot of threads that movie through this movie, which all converge at the end, and Guy Richie did this very well in this movie and in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Unfortunately in Sherlock Holmes he falls into the more traditional Hollywood style, and the other two movies that he made between this one, and Sherlock Holmes were pretty ordinary (one I did not watch, and another I simply cannot remember). He made a huge success with Lock Stock, however the originality that he brought about in his first movie seems to begin to flag in this film.
Yes, it is still incredibly funny in parts, and Vinnie Jones' character can be an absolute scream at times (as well as the scene with the replicas and his friend the Desert Eagle .05), however at other parts the film simply seems to be full of clichés. What is also good is that Brad Pitt comes into this film to demonstrate his ability to simply create a character that is memorable. Richie's first movie was full of unknowns (with the exception of Vinnie Jones, but then unless you followed the English Premiership League, you would unlikely know him) but that movie, and this film, pretty much made Jason Stratham. However Richie was never able to really capitalise on his success, until Sherlock Holmes that is, and while that film still had a lot of his style in it, it seemed to simply slip into what one would expect from a big budget Hollywood blockbuster.