If you're a British man in your twenties or thirties, the chances are you've probably seen this a fair few times. The fact that I ended up watching it (again) today wasn't by choice, therefore, but to humour someone who hadn't seen it. If that makes watching it sound like a chore, it is and it isn't. The film is ten years old now and very resonant of its time.
Four young British clothes horses (they're models, not actors right?) end up owing a cartoonish local villain half a million pounds with only a week to pay up. There then transpires an unlikely sequence of events in which three gangs all handle- at one time or another- a bag-load of cash, a van-load of drugs and two antique muskets. There a few minor twists and turns and all of the loose ends are tied up in under two hours. It is the type of movie designed to flatter the audience that they are following a labyrinthine plot when- in reality- not a lot happens.
What makes Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels so exemplary of late nineties film-making is its over-stylization. The entire thing is drenched in sepia, it has an achingly cool soundtrack, there is cartoon violence done in CGI slo-mo, the whole thing is so obviously packaged and a product by design. It is as if Guy Ritchie was handed copies of Trainspotting, Pulp Fiction, The Italian Job and The Matrix and instructed to produce a film that combines their best bits. It is all so fucking deliberate and meticulously planned to tick the boxes that defined that zeitgeist.
The only thing that Guy Ritchie brings to Lock, Stock... which you won't have seen done better before is his infatuation with butch men. This isn't a homo-erotic thing, it is clear (with the hindsight of his subsequent offerings) that Ritchie likes and identifies with 'tough guys'. His films increasingly focus upon tough working class men doing tough working class things and, given his privileged upbringing, this can't help but look a little like a posh man exercising his infatuation in public. Which is a bit odd. The problem is that the slang dialogue and casual homophobia sound a little too contrived to be convincing.
Having said all of this, I'm not kicking the movie. It is entertaining and succeeds in its (limited) aims. I'll give it a creditable 5/10.
