Barrel of Laughs

I recently watched one of writer/director Guy Ritchie's earliest films, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I had fortunately only heard a few good things about it. After the fact, I learned the movie is ranked #189 in the Top 250 over at IMDB.com. Had I started in expecting a movie that fantastic, I would likely have been disappointed.

I very nearly was anyway. The movie really doesn't get started right away. It's almost like Hot Fuzz, in that the first chunk of the movie is a careful setting into place of all the pieces, all needed for what is to follow. Unlike Hot Fuzz, there's not really enough humor in the setting up, either.

Things seem to be slowly going off the rails as the first act unfolds. There's an out of place narrator chiming in to offer thoroughly unnecessary commentary; he's almost literally just narrating the action on screen. There are showy uses of freeze frames, speed ramps, and slow motion that feel like they'd be more in character for a music video. Sting shows up in a small role (yes, the musician and sometimes actor -- that Sting), way more famous than anyone else in the movie, and so quite a distraction. (Well, alright, Jason Statham is in there too, but consider that nobody knew who the hell he was at the time.)

But then, just when I'm on the brink of writing off the movie, things start to happen. The oddly disparate plots start uniting. The awkward camera tricks go away (mostly). The humor starts to click. It really starts to get interesting. And when it's all over, I find I've quite enjoyed myself.

It's not perfect, but it's quite good for a movie that was clearly made for damn cheap. I rate it a B, and I'll probably be checking out some of Guy Ritchie's other movies. I've heard some people compare him to Quentin Tarantino, but I have to say I enjoyed this movie quite a bit more than any Tarantino films I've seen.