“RocknRolla” finds Ritchie back with a vengeance
Hollywood Newsroom is now Buzz Newsroom! Visit and bookmark our new site. Buzz is bigger and better, including sports, world news, gadgets and the entertainment news that you're used to. Same staff, just more stuff! Why Fark, Drudge and Huffington when you can Buzz!?First the good news: Guy Ritchie is back. Then the even better news: Guy Ritchie is back with his most accessible and enjoyable film yet in “RocknRolla.”
After getting swept off course by Madonna (”Swept Away”) and pretension (”Revolver”), the English writer-director, who in the late ’90s invented a new form of criminally funny pulp fiction set in an exaggerated London underworld, returns to this gangland with renewed vigor. It’s all here: the ingenious, obscenity-laced language, the double-crosses that turn into triple-crosses, the swaggering characters so in love with themselves. GottaLove “RocknRolla”!
Which also is good news for Warner Bros. when the distributor releases the dark crime comedy nationally October 8. Although pitched more toward males, the film contains one deliciously duplicitous turn by Thandie Newton that might touch more than a few female viewers’ inner gangster.
The London underworld to which Ritchie returns looks very much the same but somehow different. For one thing, that skyline is changing constantly thanks to the upsurge in skyscrapers and property values, which is what Ritchie’s story revolves around. For another, a nouveau riche idea of swank has invaded the new East London commercial complexes, and the place is full of Russian and Eastern European businessmen.
“RocknRolla” throws three distinct branches of criminals against one another. Old School, with its network of on-the-take bureaucrats, crooked politicians and backdoor fixers, is represented by Tom Wilkinson’s merciless mobster and his right-hand man, Mark Strong. New School is Karel Roden’s Russian billionaire, backed by a willingness to use physical violence that makes Old School look as if Mary Poppins were its headmistress.
- from Reuters