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Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Movie Review

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a 1998 crime comedy film directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Jason Statham among others. It’s a very overrated flick.

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“If the milk turns out to be sour,

I ain’t the kinda pussy to drink it.

Know what I mean?“

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It follows a self-confident young man who loses money to a powerful crime lord in a rigged game. To pay off his debts, he and his friends decide to rob a small-time gang who happen to be operating out of the flat next door. I found the entire storyline utterly convoluted. This is one of those films that have way too many characters, thus all are underdeveloped and forgettable. Their dynamics are great, but individually I did not find any of them particularly memorable while the plot itself is difficult to follow and only occasionally inspired.

Jason Statham is probably the most interesting actor here as this is one of the roles that put him on the map. He’s great and very charismatic throughout. Others all have their moments, but those are fleeting. It would have been so much better had the number of characters been cut in half. The acting, though, is uniformly great from these somewhat unknown, but confident actors.

Where Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels excels at is at the humor. It’s the type of brisk, all-British insult humor that really works because there are so many lines here that are highly amusing and perfectly delivered by its competent actors. The humor clearly is the best part of this otherwise only okay feature.

It would have been so much greater had they focused more on the comedic instead of the crime elements. The dialogue is actually pretty good, but again the storyline is in its entirety uninspired and incomprehensible, thus rendering the film’s quality moot.

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The cinematography is great as the film’s somewhat grainy look is very interesting. Guy Ritchie directed the film with a lot of style, but for the most part he tried so hard to emulate Tarantino that he ended up only aping him in the process. The movie is not as original as it thinks it is.