Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

Dark, dangerous and a great deal of wicked, amoral fun. A film that manages to be as clever, playful and mock violent as its title, Lock, Stock was a major hit in its native Britain and its cheeky tone, simultaneously calculated and off the cuff, is as hip as anyone could want. [5 Mar 1999]Read Full Review »

A dynamite bundle from British writer-director Guy Ritchie. Even when the accents are as indecipherable as the plot, Ritchie keeps the action percolating and the humor on high.Read Full Review »

It's a superior thriller made with the guts and gusto that too many recycled entries into the genre fail to exhibit.Read Full Review »

A special weapon unto itself. Spring-loaded with cockney esprit, it peppers its audience with aggressive, sarcastic grapeshot. That's English for "fun," by the way.Read Full Review »

A considerable kick, though it would have helped if one of the boys had wiped off the lens of the camera once in a while.Read Full Review »

[It's] like Tarantino crossed with the Marx Brothers, if Groucho had been into chopping off fingers...Fun, in a slapdash way; it has an exuberance, and in a time when movies follow formulas like zombies, it's alive.Read Full Review »

The film's lures, while undeniable, are synthetic, and we never do learn what fuels all the greed besides pints of beer.Read Full Review »

A half-funny, half-ugly comedy about underworld ineptitude. [5 Mar 1999]Read Full Review »

Flashy, random shifts of film speed and a true rogues' gallery of striking if one-note characters, do hold interest even if they have no real right to. The commercial aspects also deflect attention from the fact that this story has almost no center at all.Read Full Review »

Given its boundless sarcasm, running-jumping- standing-still ambience and hyperbolic Guignol violence, Lock, Stock aspires to be something like the Beatles meet the "Wild Bunch." Too bad it doesn't have even a rubber soul.Read Full Review »