Revolver

Plot synopsis:
Jake Green (Jason Statham) is in prison in solitary confinement for seven years. He has two mysterious characters serving solitary in cells on either side of him (one a con man, the other a chess master). While in solitary, Jake and the other two exchange thoughts on chess and the perfect con via handwritten messages slipped inside of provisional books that the three share. Jake comes to learn the makings of a perfect con, but never fully grasps its depth and relevancy to him until much, much later. In the course of these exchanges, Jake reveals a lot about himself to the other two. Jake never meets these two men face to face. The two prisoners plan to break out of prison and agree to break Jake out as well. The next day, the two escape, leaving Jake behind. He feels cheated.Jake remains in prison while the two escaped convicts steal all the money Jake had hidden "on the outside". They trusted Jake with the formula; Jake trusted them as to the whereabouts of his money...a LOT of money. They take the money, leaving in its place, a message on a card:The first rule of any game - YOU CAN ONLY GET SMARTER BY PLAYING A SMARTER OPPONENT.Cut to two years later.When Jake gets out of prison, broke and penniless, he starts to practice what he understands of the formula and of the con he learned from his time in solitary. Its very successful and he does very well in world of gambling, he seemingly learned a valuable lesson from the two conmen inside.Once Jake is up on his feet again (financially speaking), he takes on his nemesis the power hungry Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta). Jake enters Macha's casino with his brothers in tow, and is swiftly summoned before Macha to play a game of chance. En route to Macha's game, they must take an elevator up 22 floors, where it is revealed Jake suffers from extreme claustrophobia following his years in solitary, and must suppress an anxiety attack to make the journey. At the game, Jake beats him in a game of chance, humiliating Macha. Fearing more of the same, Macha wants revenge and orders a hit on Jake. As Jake and his brothers leave the casino, Jake is approached by a mysterious man (Zach), who offers him assistance and hands him a note reading "take the elevator." Jake cannot face the return journey and opts to take the stairs, but blacks out unexpectedly, falls down the stairs and is rushed to the hospital. The doctors report he is very ill but do not disclose why he had the blackout. Macha puts out the order for a hit on Jake, asking professional killer Sorter (Mark Strong) to take care of things. Jake arrives home, without Billy, to be welcomed by one of Macha's hits. Jake is the only one who survives, being rescued by the mysterious Zach. Sorter is confounded by Jake's escape and survival, unaccustomed to his hits going wrong, which instigates a quiet, intense process of self-questioning in the otherwise passionless killer.Zach takes Jake to his equally mysterious partner, Avi, who produces the results of his hospital tests and informs him that he is in desperate physical trouble from an internal disease, with only three days to live. He tells Jake he and his partner can save him from both Macha and his physical aliment.Simultaneously, Macha is trying to get into business with the infamous, but apparently invisible Sam Gold. He makes a deal with his female representative Lily Walker (who represents the queen on the chess board). Macha is warned if he does not come through on the deal that Sam Gold will be very disappointed. Macha is after the reward of being in business with Gold (who represents the opponent) and foresees no problem.The deal is for some white powder, which represents vice of multiple manifestations, in other words, false ways to escape the wrath of Gold or win the game, but perversely these just bring you closer to him.Jake agrees to do whatever the two mysterious characters tell him to do (a gun to the head so to speak - he has three days to live), there is no time to haggle, and he is prepared to do whatever hes told by these characters. Avi (André Benjamin) and Zach (Vincent Pastore) appear to be loan sharks and gradually force Jake to give away all his money that he made using the con, much to his despair. This is so painful that it seems to be killing a part of him, as Avi and Zach force him to do whatever he hates to do. Jake is repeatedly forced into elevators, taking him on a physiological and psychological ride from hell. They also sabotage Macha's deal with Gold, putting Macha in jeopardy with Gold and forcing Macha to seek the powder from a rival crime boss, Lord Jon (Tom Wu). To make matters worse, they sabotage the deal with Lord Jon to make it appear that each gang is responsible for the treachery. These two gangs begin to destroy one another through their ignorance and greed.Jake's journey climaxes when Avi and Zach, now his masters, ask Jake to shoot a man that didn't pay a debt. Jake refuses, going against the voice in his head. This is the turning point and just when Jake has had enough he forces the two mysterious characters to reveal their game. Is he ready for the answer? What is the point of putting him through all this pain?Avi and Zach simply repeat the treasured formula that Jake learned in prison and which the audience is told at the start of the film.The first rule of any game: YOU CAN ONLY GET SMARTER BY PLAYING A SMARTER OPPONENT.Jake now realizes that he has fallen victim to this "perfect con", that he is actually the pawn in the game, and his opponent ("Sam Gold"), resides inside Jake's head - "the last place he would ever look" (another component of the perfect con formula) Sam Gold is a metaphor camouflaged as fear, ego, evil, the Devil.Now armed with this information which has been so elusive, Jake goes to war with himself. He realizes the game Avi and Zach have made him play has been to diminish the Sam Gold within himself - and that is why he felt like he was dying, because a part of him was.This game it seems is back to front. Jake gives away his remaining money to a charity in Dorothy Macha's name and Macha takes the credit. At this point we understand that the voice we hear in the film as a voice over is not a voice over at all, it's the Sam Gold in each of the character's heads.Macha is being fattened up by the voice in his head that encourages Macha to take the credit.To conquer the game that Jake now realizes he is in, he goes to Macha and humiliates himself, begging for forgiveness at the foot of his bed. This goes completely against the voice in Jakes head, which is now in major agony. Leaving Macha's bedroom, Jake takes an elevator that gets stuck, (his worst nightmare, as he is claustrophobic) but here is where a real battle takes place. Jake induces the pain "Sam Gold" hides behind. Sam Gold tries every technique to control and debilitate Jake, but Jake is now detached enough from the voice to fall for it. "Embrace the pain and you will win this game" -- in doing this, Jake completely sheds himself of Sam Gold. Immediately upon doing so, the elevator starts up. He realizes that though free from the physical prison he knew for seven years, he was still a prisoner - of his own mind. Upon facing and defeating his fear, he is profoundly free.As the elevator doors open, there stands a confused and angry Macha with a gun in his hand. He can't understand what game Jake is playing, but Jake no longer cares about Macha. Gun or no gun, Jake walks straight past Macha. Because Jake no longer fears him, Macha breaks down. His ego can't handle this, he falls prey to the voice he hears inside his head, the voice of his own "Sam Gold". Still unaware of who Sam Gold really is, and where he resides, Macha agonizes over his knowledge that Sam Gold is going to come and get him. What he doesnt realize is that Sam Gold is already getting him - from the inside.Jake makes a large donation of money to a charity in Macha's name, further conquering the Sam Gold within him, while augmenting the Sam Gold within Macha, who happily takes the credit and public acclaim. Macha is at first magnanimous towards Jake following this gesture, however on learning that Jake had orchestrated the sabotage on the 'powder' deals, Macha orders him dead with renewed vigour. Macha's men find Jakes brother and niece at his home. While Macha's henchmen are in the process of torturing Jake's brother and threatening his little girl, the previously passive Sorter concludes his process of self-questioning and steps in, methodically executing all of Macha's men only to be outgunned in the end by the last surviving member of the gang, who takes Jake's niece back to Macha.Jake, now understanding that the mysterious characters Avi and Zach are not who he thought they were, finishes a game of chess in Macha's casino with Avi. Here it is revealed that Avi could have beaten him at any time. Avi tells him one of the rules again, the art is for the opponent to feed pieces to the victim to make them believe they took those pieces because they are smarter and you are dumber. Jake realizes that these are the two associates from Solitary confinement that he spent seven years living between while in prison. They promised they would break him out of prison and they did, its just Jake didn't realize it was the prison of his mind and how big that prison was. Avi and Zach confide they did not help him because they liked him, but because they ARE him - they are aspects, or projections, of his own higher self. Meanwhile, Jake's Sam Gold persona grew from Jake's activities on emerging from prison, fooling his enemies into thinking he was making them rich when instead he was siphoning their money away from them, just as the ego grows rich from encouraging excess and a sense of entitlement in those within whom it resides.Jake confronts Macha, who is holding his niece hostage. Jake continues to be unafraid of Macha, who continues to be unnerved by his lack of fear - the "Sam Gold" inside Macha is screaming with rage, pride, fear, while Macha himself is consumed by doubt and panic. Macha is convinced Sam Gold is coming to kill him for screwing up the 'powder' delivery and the "Sam Gold" within Macha - his ego - whispers "you can't kill someone who's already dead." Ultimately, his pride and fear lead Macha to suicide rather than kill Jake or his niece. Sam Gold wins.In the end it's a story about realizing that the prison is the mind and the ego is the hidden master of that environment. The only real enemy to have ever existed is within; it is fear. The external world is determined, to great degree, by ones fear. Fear is the opponent in life, and as you get smarter so does he. Once it's recognized for what it is, it can be mastered, but without recognition of this situation, you are simply an unconscious slave and the game hasn't gone full circle.

Tags: psychological, murder, violence, cult, flashback, clever, philosophical, sadist

Review:
this movie so far has been slated by critics and board-posters alike (although playing devil's advocate you could suggest that critics are often people who didn't make it for themselves as film-makers, and board posters are often people who didn't make it for themselves as critics) so I wanted to sit in Guy's corner with the magic sponge to perhaps reach maybe a couple of the people who've decided not to see the film based on how everybody seems to be looking down their collective nose of approval at it.The film's biggest flaw in earning wide support is how unexpectedly complex it is.
This is but one example of Ritchie's far more mature approach he has taken to film-making with Revolver, we have a storyline which is pretty archetypal (the strong but silent gritty anti-hero gets released from jail with a score to settle but gets drawn inadvertently into a world of corruption...
I mean it's paint by numbers film noir here guys, all the way down to the vague poetic choice of diction and the gritty voice-overs) but then Guy has taken this framework to make a number of extremely philosophical and complex points.Take the scene where Jason Statham's character runs afoul of a car.
but Ritchie is making point about how such little chance happenings such as receiving a phone call can make the difference between life and death.So the final act of the movie is pretty mind boggling, I'd be taking the p*ss if I said I didn't spend the last 20 minutes or so of the film turning to my date going "uh...
I feel that if everyone watched this film over and over they would understand it a lot more and maybe appreciate it for the fine piece of modern cinema that it is and i hope also that Ritchie continues in this vain as i far prefer this to his mockney "masterpieces"..
I was very surprised to see the overall rating as 5.2.Not only does Guy bring together a b list(ish) movie cast and make them into such glorious characters, he has given us a movie with a fantastically diverse story line with much left to the imagination.Far too many people are wanting movies with a plot that can be understood and handed to them on a plate...yet these are the films that get poor reviews because they are far too predictable.This film is special.
I believe he has taken movie-making to another level ( i know most people will be laughing at this comment guaging the reaction to this film, but i believe time will prove me right ).
In this picture, Ray did it amazingly.The film is well worth seeing by all those who like psychological and mob-style movies.Probably not the best of its kind, but for the performance of the actors, for the script well written, for the action-packed adventure of our hero, I gave it a 9 out of 10.
It happens every year  critics have so many mediocre films to write about that a good one sees loving reviews in the same way as a bad one is the chance to write a really memorable, scathing review  whether either it is truly deserved or not.So this leaves me with my colleague's statement and on that I found him to be accurate because at times it does SEEM to be a really cool film that is going somewhere interesting.
The rest of the cast pretty much provide solid enough tough men without (fortunately) sinking into the easy "apples and pears" type performances that Ritchie seems to like in his films generally.
The only performance of real note though is from Ritchie as director because he pulls everything together with a lot of visual style and imagination; shame then that the worst "performance" is also from him as a writer because he has produced a script so full of its own cleverness that it cannot be bothered to aim for engaging the audience and sits back arrogantly while the delivery is fudged and incoherent.Revolver is not the screaming disaster that everyone would have you believe, but this is as close to a recommendation as I can give it.
We saw this film at the TFF premiere Sunday night and although the first half was entertaining (despite the seemingly ridiculous premise), it took a turn towards insanity about halfway through and completely lost and disappointed me.Now, I like to consider myself a reasonably intelligent viewer (though maybe I'm wrong) and I love movies that make you think, but this one just went too far.
Guy Ritchie got really good actors for this film, and i think Andre Benjamin was great as Avi and seemed like he does acting for a living he done so well.
The cinematic smoke and mirrors only lead me to believe that Ritchie was as bored telling this trite tale as I was watching it.The film is filled with moments of revelation that are supposedly shocking but they only come as news to Mr. Green.
It seems like an awfully long time since Guy Ritchie's last film Snatch (Don't even mention the Madonna vanity project Swept Away).
So what the audience gets ultimately is a terrible screenplay intertwined with many pretentious oneliners and clumsy setpieces.Revolver is ultimately an unoriginal and bland movie that has stolen countless themes from masterpieces like Fight Club, Usual Suspects and Pulp Fiction.
After catching this at the cinema last night and having a nights sleep to think it over I've got to say I'm still a) not quite sure what happened at the end and b) not 100% sure if I enjoyed it or not.However, given the recent glut of dot to dot plot and expensive thoughtless nonsense we've been treated to this summer is it really a crime to make a film that regardless of your liking for it still makes you ponder?
Sure it has delusions of grandeur and at times disappears up its own backside - the anime still baffles me as to its inclusion - but you've got to give Guy Ritchie credit for trying to make something a bit different, and whilst he is taking a battering on all sides I've got nothing but admiration for his 'bravery' - as his missus declared at the premiere.Jason Statham is as dependable as always - despite the dodgy barnet - and Ray Liotta and the rest of the supporting cast all acquit themselves well - special mentions should go to Mark Strong and Andre Benjamin.
It looks great and has some good set pieces - so all in all - interesting.....did I like it, not sure - am I still thinking about it -Yes - which is more than can be said for the majority of the other instantly forgettable nonsense we've been spoon fed with over the last few months - a DVD viewing beckons, I'll work out that ending even if it kills me!!.
Its like if you took the general themes of The Usual Suspects and Fightclub, take away all their style and class and mixed them together with a lot of pretentious new wave "i'm intellectual so my movie must be hard to make sense of" film maker rubbish, mashed in a few extra styles for good measure, chopped off the ending, there you have Revolver.Yes, I did think about it for a little bit after watching, and yes it did kind of make sense, however that doesn't stop it being garbage.Waste of money.
The soundtrack (a strength in previous Richie films) was disappointingly sparse.As far as addressing the defenders of this movie who claim that the detractors "didn't get it," I will say this: It's not that the plot 'didn't make sense,' it was that it was implausible.It's not that I don't enjoy non-linear story-telling, it's that I actually want to be told a story.It's not that I didn't understand what was going on, it was that I didn't care..
It's almost as if he had a checklist of films he wanted to rip off, here are some of the ones I noticed:The Matrix, Fight Club, Kill Bill, The Usual Suspects, Vanilla Sky...I think the most frustrating thing is that the performances from the two main actors, Jason Statham and Ray Liotta, were actually very good and it was really the self indulgent story and editing / direction that let the film down.So a big, big thumbs down from me..
An advert for the lousy cult that Guy Ritchie and his gap-toothed wife belong to, Revolver is one of, if not the worst film of the year.Plot: nonsensical.
Ostensibly a gangster movie, Guy Ritchie's REVOLVER turns out to be some self-serving, pretentious piece of existentialism in which characters aren't really characters but rather archetypes and a key theme revolves around a game of chess.
Statham is way out of his comfort zone and needs to go back to the stock action movies he's better known for, and Ray Liotta, prancing around in tight swimming trunks, should really know better.I do tend to gain some mild enjoyment from most of the films I watch, even the bad ones.
And the 'fear me' scene between Liotta (a shoo in for a Raspberry if ever there was one) and Statham (should stick to the Transporter movies) was one of the stupidest ever committed to film.A waste of time and money, go rent Snatch instead.* out of *****.
I have seen a worse film than this, something involving Lee Majors and a load of Vikings, but that's it - this can't even be described as pretentious garbage, as that would suggest that there was a definitive idea behind it - this plays as though it was made up as it went along.Every now and then Mr Ritchie finds a new button on the editing suite and thinks "That's neat - lets play about with that a bit" regardless of whether it makes sense or not which just adds to the utterly incomprehensible plot line - one of the twists is so obvious it's painful, and by the time you get to the other one, you're way beyond caring.Utter, utter rubbish.
It was like GR had written down one of their conversations, mixed it with a game of poker and turned it into a script.It is fairly obvious that GR wanted to make us think, but with so many plot threads and so many clues and plot threads, the viewer is left in a horrible purgatory between being told the plot as a whole and being able to draw his own conclusions - leaving us sitting like morons in the dark looking at our watches.As an example of the needless effects used, at one point in the film, Guy Ritchie take it uses a cartoon effect similar to that in Kill Bill.
It's from The Usual Suspects of course in relation to Kaiser Gold..I mean Sose..I got another one like that: -The dumbest trick a director ever pulled was trying to convince an audience he actually had a storyline-This movie is one of the saddest pieces of film-making I have seen in a long time.
"Ah Ritchie's made another gangster film with Statham" thought the average fan, expecting another Snatch/Lock Stock; expecting perhaps a couple of temporal shifts, but none too hard for "me and the lads" to swallow after a few beers.Ah, pay attention, you do need to watch this film.
maybe this would resemble Lock stock or snatch, but I was wrong, but that didn't stop me.The movie starts pretty good, even promising, it even has a nice plot build up, but then it slowly begins to turn into something so stupid and unimaginative that it nearly makes you cry, plot holes are everywhere, at most the plot doesn't make any sense, and that's how the movie goes until the most illogical ending ever, making you feel like you were raped, the acting is OK at best, but that's because of pre-film school writing, the script of this movie is like something that escaped out of a trash can or a reject list.In short, spare yourself from watching this garbage, this movie should have never been made, therefore should not be watched by anyone, you don't hate your brain cells that much that you should put them through watching this..
For a film that starts out so well and with a great cast (the acting is actually quite good) it just ends up getting more and more confused about what it wants to be until the highly disappointing end.
The reason for this is not specifically made clear (probably because the writers thought "ah, screw it, it doesn't matter") but rather we are given hints through the central character's inane voice-over.Thus Jason Statham endlessly mumbles absolute garbage like "He is the bad guy, but how can you be responsible for all the evil in the world if you don't exist?" That's a genuine quote by the way.And so continues the movie.
But this new movie, well, there's no other way to say it; "Revolver" makes NO SENSE AT ALL.It's very difficult to write about a film in which I have no idea what goes on.
With "Revolver," Ritchie has left behind the unintelligible cockney of his earlier films that baffled so many audiences, and traded it in for unintelligible whole movie instead..
I was however left with a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth after sitting through 115 minutes of confused, ill-thought, and generally "bad" direction, I only was left thinking "given the same budget and resources how could I have physically made a worse film?" This question to me still remains unanswered.I am a huge fan of Snatch and Lock-Stock, and Mr Richie would have been better advised to stick to the formula that made him so successful instead of trying create something for him to be taken more "seriously" in the film industry.Please don't suggest that Revolver is a good film just because of the success of the previous two movies.
Maybe for y'all, if it's complicated you get all excited and figure that means it's real real deep.Ritchie took themes, conventions and plot turns from countless movies, used them instead of paying homage to them, wrapped them in a mediocre riddle and doused it with some pop-spirituality juice, pulled the riddle apart into pieces, tied those pieces into knots and gave them to a bunch of very good actors and then filmed them out of order with beautiful camera work on gorgeous sets.Doesn't make it modern art, doesn't make it deep or smart, and it doesn't mean that if I didn't find it compelling, it must have gone over my head.
It was like you could here people saying " what the heck was that?"I think you should watch this film with no expectations, its nowhere near as good as lock stock and snatch.
I think my mistake was having watched Snatch just two days before watching this, so I had expectations on the nature of the film I was about to watch.Ultimately though, there were times during the film were I just got bored and desperately wanted Vinnie Jones to make an appearance and bring the movie back down to Earth..
The acting is so bad (apart from Andre - who is brilliant and has such a sexy voice!) After watching the film I was left feeling totally confused and surprised that it was a Guy Ritchie film as I was sure that with his name it would be a good watch.
Perhaps the most interesting casting choice is George Sweeney a very familiar face in British TV dramas in the 1970s playing the same sort of roles Ray Winstone inherited in the 1980s In summary REVOLVER is an absolute mess of a movie but the sheer kinetic energy Guy Ritchie puts in to the visuals means it holds the audience interest which is something of a compliment to the director even though it's a very back hand compliment.
I'm still not sure whether you're meant to ignore these things, because if you do it's actually a pretty enjoyable film, despite the lack of cockney humour (the only laughs coming from Ray Liotta in his underpants)But it's my bet that the film was written with the intention of people watching it multiple times, to a: make lots of money, and b: to become a classic like The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, and to a lesser extent 12 Monkeys.
It looks as if Guy Ritchie has just sat down and thought 'right Layer Cake rocked, ill try and make my own serious gangster film, but ill mix in fight club with the usual suspects'.Where the amazing camera has work, the awesome comedy dialogue of lock stock and snatch, Is this the end of Guy Ritchie?
If you think Madonna is the sh*t, see this movie.Otherwise, stay away.Ritchie, using the familiar hook of the gritty crime flick to bring in his Lock, Stock and Snatch audience, proceeds to spend 104 minutes of your valuable time wanking off.The film, a fantasy set in an alternative universe that is a cross between New Jersey and Blackpool, gets off to a rousing start, then quickly devolves into the world's longest MTV video with gag-inducing philosophical pretensions.I won't bore you with its professed philosophy, but suffice it to say that it is so obtuse the director had to resort to running interview clips with various PHDs over the closing credits to explain it.
Decided to give it a go as I've seen some of Guy Richies' movies and liked 'em, and was I ever in for a ride.Revolver is definitely the best of Richies' films.
Night Shyamalan titled "The Man Who Heard Voices." It's my personal professional opinion, not as any kind of psychiatrist but as a humble hobby-interested movie critic, that Guy Ritchie could join that club following his film Revolver.
I started watching this without knowing it was a Guy Ritchie...once I found out it made perfect sense.This film is awful.