Numerous robberies, black market sales, an underground high stakes poker game, and traffic violations abound in Guy Richie’s first motion picture – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Featuring the now iconic director’s signature style, Richie fills his intricately plotted, multifaceted storyline with fast paced editing, even faster paced dialogue, his oddball sense of humour, rich personas, and eye-catching style that consists of both sepia tones as well as vivid colours.
Though the tale consists of many varied characters, Eddy (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Soap (Dexter Fletcher) and Bacon (Jason Statham) make up the main gang. They are a group of friends that have been together since childhood and have been small time crooks for nearly as long. Tom, Soap and Bacon have come together to raise one hundred thousand pounds for Eddy, a card shark who is gunning at winning it big in an underground high stakes poker game run by ‘Hatchet’ Harry Longdale (P.H. Moriarty) – a porn king with a crooked angle. He always has his enforcer, Barry ‘The Baptist’(Lenny McLean), by his side. The man gained his moniker not for being a man of the cloth, but rather, for his penchant for dipping the heads of those men who upset his boss in water for copious amounts of time.
Harry tips the odds in his favour, causing talented Eddy to lose not only the money he came in with, but also an excess of five hundred thousand pounds (which the kingpin lent him). The young man and the rest of his friends are given one week to cover their debt, after which, they lose a finger a day. As Harry does not believe that he will ever receive payment, he puts his debt collector, ‘Big’ Chris (Vinnie Jones), who always has his lookalike son ‘Little’ Chris (Peter McNicholl) by his side, on the case.
Harry has ‘Big’ Chris tiptoe around the four men, going right to Eddy’s father JD (Sting) – as the pornographer desperately desires the man’s profitable establishment.
Becoming increasingly desperate, the men decide to pull a heist on their next door neighbours, who are planning their own robbery (Eddy luckily overhears it through the thin walls of their decrepit flat). The group of criminals are run by Dog (Frank Harper), who is leading his men to rob a cannabis grow op that is being managed by Winston (Steven Mackintosh). Winston is not the brightest of men, and he surrounds himself with people of even lower intelligence. They guard their cash and drugs with one weapon – an air gun that lacks any firepower. The drug dealer is subservient to Rory Breaker (Vas Blackwood), a man with a penchant for violence.
During the course of the film, another heist is pulled. Harry, a collector of rare firearms, tells his enforcer to hire some local thugs to rob a rich family before they place their weapons up for auction. He hires two dimwits, who bungle the operation, returning the wrong guns and selling the only two that matter to a fence by the name of Nick ‘The Greek’ (Stephen Marcus).
The three unusual heists all intersect in bizarre ways, demonstrating how luck, fate, idiocy and chance play a part in life and all of its intricacies. The various players cross paths, leading to the desired items being tossed around like a juggling act, with them finding their way into numerous hands as the death toll rises and the stakes become more and more dire.
Ritchie, who both wrote and directed the piece, must be credited with writing a near air-tight script. Each nuance, be it a man running out of a bar on fire or a drugged-out woman who is always forgotten about as she melds into the sofa, comes into play in a clever and original way as the story races forward. Though it cannot be called the easiest story to follow, as it has so many moving pieces, it flows wonderfully, allowing for each player to have time to build a realistic and usually gritty character on screen. It does not hurt that Ritchie was able to procure amazing acting talents for his first picture, each of which does a brilliant job with the fast-talking, rich and unorthodox dialogue. This was actually Jason Statham’s first acting role (some may be surprised to find out that he worked as a street vendor, much like his character at the beginning of the film).
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a superb story that has a little bit of everything (minus romance) – action, comedy, drama, all wrapped within a flick that showcases multiple heists. It features a rockin’ soundtrack (James Brown, Dusty Springfield, The Stooges, to name but a few), while also using the iconic Hellenic tune ‘Zorba the Greek’ in a memorable way. Ending with a cliffhanger, this one will leave you with your hands full – as you call or text your friends to recommend this flick to them.