RocknRolla

There is something a little pretentious about the possessive directorial credit, but in this case "a Guy Ritchie film" is more descriptive than a plot synopsis. You can find Ritchie's lad-boy genre love in every slang-filled Brit-gangster-talk line, every intertwining plot twist, and every flash of criminal code and junkie honor. Gerard Butler is ostensibly the lead as street thug One Two and as close as we get to a good guy in this collection of colorful bad guys, but he's really just part of an ensemble on a web of crisscrossing plots that wind around the Russian mob, a scamming bookkeeper (Thandie Newton), a heroin-buzzed punk rocker, and big boss Tom Wilkinson, who tries to profit from every scheme. It's flashy, garish, self-aware and self-satisfied, not exactly smart but exceedingly clever, a puzzle of a movie slowly locking together. For all of Ritchie's attempts at suspense, it's really about the minor pleasures of watching him play with film and style and storytelling.

The two-disc edition features commentary by writer/director Ritchie and co-star Mark Strong (who offers some of the more interesting insights and observations), along with a short featurette on the film's locations ("Guy's Town"), a deleted scene (which is marginally clever and utterly inessential and was quite rightly cut), and a bonus disc with a digital copy of the film for portable media players. Exclusive to the Blu-ray edition is the 15-minute "Blokes, Birds and Backhanders: Explore the World of RocknRolla," a classic "making of" featurette in which all the actors talk about their characters and join in with the director lobbing compliments all around.