THE STORY: A brutally comic tale about a group of London friends who find themselves deep in debt to an East End tough, LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS is quick-paced, stylized, and highly entertaining. In his debut feature film, director-writer Guy Ritchie weaves a tangled web of shady, blithely eccentric characters and several storylines, all of them coming together in a gleeful explosion of murder and mayhem. When streetwise charmer Eddy (Nick Moran), the son of steely bar owner JD (Sting), botches a gambling scheme with his dad’s nemesis, porn king Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty), he’s got one week to come up with 500,000 pounds or he loses his fingers–and so do his friends Tom (Jason Flemyng), Bacon (Jason Statham), and Soap (Dexter Fletcher). While the pals scheme to make the money, Harry indulges his penchant for valuable antique shot guns, stolen for him by a couple of inept burglars. Soon the missing guns, a paranoid group of marijuana growers, a mean-spirited debt collector (Vinnie Jones) and his young son, and a violent bunch of thugs, are all thrown together in this tightly-woven, genuinely funny story that takes its inspiration from old British comic gangster flicks like THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN and more recent films like RESERVOIR DOGS and THE USUAL SUSPECTS.
THE REVIEW: Lock, Stock isn’t a bad movie. Guy Ritchie has had many ups and downs and Lock, Stock sits somewhere in the middle. The biggest thing in hindsight is how the movie as made stars out of a few of the actors—most notably Jason Statham. Ritchie’s manic style has been replayed in many of Statham’s films.
The Locked ‘N Loaded Director’s cut is a little over ten minutes longer than the theatrical release. This isn’t exactly the Lord of the Rings directors cut where there are numerous scenes added. If you are a fan of the film or have seen it before you may not really notice what is added. I watched the original release again in order to discover if the new scenes were a real reason to buy the new release. Sadly, the additional ten minutes doesn’t make this version must see.
THE EXTRAS: “One Smoking Camera” – A featurette on the film’s cinematography. This is a joke—at least is seems to be considering it comes it at under two minutes.
“Lock, Stock and Two F**king Barrels” – A compilation of all of the film’s expletives. This is another wasted effort.
FRANKLY: If you really want to have the movie and some great extras then don’t buy the Locked ‘N Loaded version because it’s absolutely the opposite of loaded.
+ Charlie Craine
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