RocknRolla

Guy Ritchie, possibly the most over-hyped director of recent years, has high hopes for his comeback gangster vehicle, RocknRolla. It is a return to Ritchie’s original form and fans of his earlier output will love RocknRolla. The film has definite echoes of Mr Madonna’s previous hits, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The less said about Swept Away the better.

A London-based Russian billionaire football club owner (sound familiar?) orchestrates a crooked land deal, putting millions of dollars up for grabs. The city's criminal underworld are all understandably attracted to massive amounts of money changing hands. A dangerous crime lord (Tom Wilkinson), a sexy accountant (Thandie Newton), a corrupt politician (Jimmy Misrtry) and a band of petty thieves (“The Wild Bunch”) are among those double-crossing one another.

Gerard Butler (300) plays One Two, a street–smart mobster who has learned to play both sides of the fence and leader of said petty criminal gang. Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton) stars as the lethal head mobster, Lenny Cole, part of London‘s old mob regime, which is quickly losing ground to the wealthier foreign mob. Meanwhile Stella, played by Thandie Newton (The Pursuit of Happyness) is an intelligent and seductive number-cruncher with a taste for danger and fills the role of bad-boy One Two’s love interest.

Ritchie clearly has a mountain to climb in order to silence his critics, especially as RocknRolla has been judged by Hollywood as being ‘too English’ to be a success Stateside. This doesn’t bode well for a film that is being billed as the first in a new trilogy. However, this is his most polished gangster films to date and is a very decent night-out.

Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Mark Strong and Tom Hardy
Certificate: 15
Runtime: 114 minutes (approx)
Release date: 5 September 2008

Adrian McBreen