See it or Skip it: RocknRolla

Guns, gangsters and Guy Ritchie: three G’s that guarantee a good time.

After Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, you know to expect when you buy a ticket to a Guy Ritchie film (if we politely ignore that whole Swept Away debacle) and he doesn’t disappoint. RocknRolla is a flashy, violent, hard driving dive into an unexpected seedy side of London: the real estate market and its many denizens trying to get rich quick by any means necessary.

A less talented film maker might not have been able to escape the trappings of style or substance but Ritchie delivers copious amounts of style WITH fantastic acting, brilliant cinematography and key oeuvre signatures through interweaving storylines that make this unmistakably another chapter in Ritchie’s London underbelly series. 

The film stars 300’s Gerald Butler, Jeremy Piven (who is uncharacteristically weak in the film, turning in a performance that’s just his Entourage character on Valium), token but enjoyable femme fatale Thandie Newton, the always wonderful Tom Wilkinson, a crush worthy Tom Hardy and the absolutely genius Mark Strong, an English actor yet to break through in America who has several movies about to be released that should shot him, deservedly, into the stratosphere.

It’s a rockin’ good time.

See it.