Finally managed to catch this flick this afternoon. Pretty standard Guy Richie fare, so if you dig his other movies you’re going to dig this one. Personally, I dig his other movies, so naturally I loved this one.
Quite a few names in this cast so I’ll just run the notables down: Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy, Toby Kebbell, Jeremy Piven, and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.
First things first, Toby Kebbell is a stud. First time I remember seeing him was “Dead Man Shoes.” Guy is great given material to work with, and he had plenty in this one. Tom Hardy was another surprise. I’ve only seen him in Inception, so I was pleasantly surprised when he popped up in this one. Butler does fine in his role, but as with a lot of Richie fare, I feel like there was more to this guy than there was screen time to tell. Piven and Bridges were spot on for what they needed to be. Piven can easily rub me the wrong way, and fortunately this was not one of those performances. Finally, Thandie Newton… the woman just oozes sex appeal, and comes across as smart, confident, and manipulative. She played her part, and played it well.
The story is the usual mishmash of Richie fare. A bunch of different threads and ridiculous coincidences all tied together in a single threat. There’s a nice twist at the end, which I didn’t see coming, probably because I was trying to pay attention to all the other threads that were getting wrapped up. The characters are likable, and there’s some really funny moments. Actually, the characters are the strong point to this flick… I just felt like all of them were spot on. Each had their role, but none seemed thrown in just to capture an archetype.
If you’re thinking of checking this one out, I’m not going to talk you out of it. While Richie has made films better than this one, its by no means bad, and I can think of plenty of other things that are worse to spend two hours on. Just don’t go into it expecting a big leap in storytelling and you should be fine.
Until next time, keep writing!
-Steve
My Other Career 
He’s working on a follow up to it. I’m not really a big fan of RocknRolla, it had its good points but ended somewhat haphazardly. Still had that Guy Ritchie pizazz we all love….
By: Dusty McCloud on October 13, 2010
at 3:04 am
Yeah, like I said, it wasn’t great, but if you dig Guy Richie movies you’ll probably enjoy it. I didn’t know if they were going forward with the sequel or not… I mean, they say right before the credits “everyone will be back,” but they said the same thing at the end of Sapceballs.
By: steveonfilm on October 13, 2010
at 6:52 pm