British Gangster Month: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

  
             Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is the directorial debut of Guy Ritchie who’s gone on to make among others the Sherlock Holmes films and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  His name has somewhat become synonymous with British gangster films because with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels he practically reinvented the genre. He made the film eighteen years after The Long Good Friday and made it stand out by heavily stylizing it and infusing it with elements of comedy and caper films. The result is a wild and outrageous but exciting and intense triumph!

                Four friends Eddy (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemying), Bacon (Jason Statham), and Soap (Dexter Fletcher), pool their money so Eddy who’s a card-shark can afford to play a game of three card brag with mob boss “Hatchet” Harry Lonsdale (P.H. Moriarty). But his enforcer Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean aka “The Guv’nor” a real-life former criminal and boxer) rigs the game causing the boys to lose and be severely in debt to the kingpin. They are given the option to pay Harry back either in £100,000 cash or in the bar owned by Eddy’s father (Sting). Failure to do either by the week’s end and they’ll be disfigured. With selling over the bar not an option for the boys, they must come up with another way to get the money before they lose their fingers to Harry’s debt collector Big Chris (Vinnie Jones). At the same time Harry’s on the lookout for a pair of antique guns that make their own way through the London criminal underworld.

                As you may be able to guess, the plot is fairly detailed and complex, and needs to be paid attention to to make sense. There are a plethora of secondary characters and subplots from every dank corner of British crime and they can easily get muddied and confusing. Luckily the story and style is unique and alluring enough that it keeps you interested, invested, and entertained wanting to keep up with all these plot points and characters. It’s clear from early on that the subplots will come together as we see familiar faces interacting with different sects knowing it’s all going to come around. And until then it’s a lot of fun to watch these characters. The main four have defined personalities that work off each other well. They’re cunning and charming rendering them more accessible to the viewers and making them easy to root for. In addition to Guy Ritchie, the movie also introduced the world to Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones, and to a lesser extent Jason Flemying. Statham has the least to do of the four possibly due to his having no acting training, having been a professional driver previously, but he definitely sticks out for his coolness and physical distinctiveness and I can see why he was the one who became the biggest star. Jones also came straight from athletics having been a footballer, but he owns every scene he’s in through an excellent combination of brute intimidation and humour (the fact he brings his kid on most of his jobs is played very well). Flemying is delightfully charismatic as Tom and Fletcher is a lot of fun playing the awkward Soap. Moran’s Eddy isn’t particularly interesting on his own, sort of a generic leader and ideas guy. But again, the four work off each other very well that any individual character weaknesses are almost irrelevant. The large supporting cast is full of over-the-top characters each with their own quirks and eccentricities. Particularly good are Steven Mackintosh as marijuana grower Winston, Vas Blackwood as drug dealer Rory, and of course Sting as Eddy’s dad. The film even manages a couple nice cameos from former Young Sherlock Holmes Nicholas Rowe as one of Winston’s mates, and comedian Rob Brydon as a traffic warden.

                Above all though this is Guy Ritchie’s film and he does a lot to make himself known stylistically as a director. The music and sound choices, shot choices, and fast pace reflect other styles and genres but combined here give it a really unique feel. So does the colour scheme of the film which leans heavily towards golds and browns immediately transporting you into this seedy criminal environment. Clearly Richie wanted to bring something of a bizarre artistic flair and not make this just an ordinary crime film. But even though he tried hard to make it feel different, he doesn’t come off as overambitious or ostentatious because the story and his script are strong enough. The writing in this film is actually pretty clever both in story progression and dialogue which is often pretty rich, smart, fast, and funny. There are some really great jokes that range from the darkly comic to the self-deprecating, like a sequence where characters talking in cockney slang are provided with subtitles. It’s one of those screenplays I imagine on its own just reads very well. But the director, cast, and crew that brought it to life ensure that watching the film is still the better option.

                Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is an almost perfect British gangster film. It depicts this world of British crime in a very different and energetic way. It’s not a tale of straightforward organized crime and showcases this violent and dark world in a new light, at least by North American standards. It’s got an off-the-wall style and characters, and a plot that’s part caper film, part comedy film, all gangster film. Add to that the introduction of a great director and actors, and an unabashedly catchy title and you’ve got a thoroughly amazing entry in an increasingly amazing genre.