Rating: B+
Dir: Guy Ritchie
Star: Jason Statham, Alan Ford, Brad Pitt, Dennis Farina
If this seems pretty familiar, it’s because this is less a follow-up to Lock, Stock… than a remake. Once again, you have a lot of character criminals running around the East End in a plot of frightening complexity, involving double-, triple- and N-crosses. However, Ritchie has learned from his previous movie, and this is immensely assured and a whole barrel of fun. Although in this movie, terms like “villain” are almost redundant, Alan Ford is a fabulous bad guy, for whom dog-fights, unlicenced boxing and feeding people to pigs are all in a day’s work; Statham is the wannabe who hires gypsy brawler Brad Pitt (not as unintelligible as you’d think from the trailer) as a replacement fighter, only to find he won’t take a dive.
Meanwhile, Farina is after a diamond lifted by Benicio Del Toro (right), which is now pinging around like a pin-ball. Add in a great bunch of other characters, led by Vinnie Jones, as well as some audacious moments of visual style, and you have a recipe for a rather good time. It is perhaps the most sarcastic movie I’ve ever seen, which may explain its lacklustre American performance. However the less irony-challenged of us should cut Ritchie some slack, albeit with a warning that he does need to come up with something different next time.