An average movie

After ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ and ‘Snatch.’, Guy Ritchie suddenly became one of the most exciting directors at work. Unfortunately, his follow-up ‘Swept Away’ was a terrible disaster, hated by the critics and the audience alike, and it was a huge flop at the box-office. Personally, even though it was definitely a weak effort especially compared to his previous movies, I don’t think it was that bad but it was obviously a huge blow for his promising career. Nowadays, it seems that he has regained some amount of respect but his last features (‘RocknRolla’, ‘Sherlock Holmes’) were not as amazing as everyone seem to think in my opinion. Anyway, between his huge flop and his come-back, Guy Ritchie made this really obscure flick which was barely noticed when it was released. Some people would argue that it is one of the best movies ever made but, honestly, it is not really that good. Basically, Ritchie tried to make his usual gangster flick but this time with some philosophical ideas added to it, some kind of mix between ‘Snatch’ and ‘Inception’. Of course, Ritchie went way over his head here and the whole thing never really worked. The best example is that the movie starts with 4 different quotes! I mean, to start a movie with one single quote is not really interesting but with 4 of them is just really lame, it gives you the feeling that the director doesn’t have any ideas of his own. Eventually, the rest of the movie was not much better, with a terribly murky plot. But don’t misunderstand me, it is not a bad movie at all. Indeed, the kinetic directing was quite awesome with some very neat visual things and Jason Statham really impressed me. Not only he wasn’t bald this time but I really had the feeling that the guy was actually acting for once and, even more surprising, he was really f*cking convincing. Furthermore, I think that the story really had some potential and it could have been indeed a great picture but I guess, they were too ambitious and the whole thing just spun out of control. To conclude, even though it must be the most obscure movie made by Guy Ritchie and even though it is not really good, I still think it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in this director’s work.

6/10