Live Life Team
Looks like Guy Ritchie’s trouble marriage with Madonna had some impact on his filmmaking skills too!
‘RockNRolla’ is his third London crime world movie after ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ and ‘Snatch’. However, this time around Ritchie seems to have been more than just “inspired” by John Mackenzie’s ‘The Long Good Friday’ – the ultimate London underworld movie.
The basic story, Russian mob boss Victor (played by Dragan Micanovic) pulls off an amazingly crooked and hugely successful land deal that means London’s underbelly suddenly wants to grab on to the millions of dollars. Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson) wants it most of all as does his accountant (Thandie Newton). There are several other smaller characters and overall the plot is a little confusing and it seems Ritchie combined three plots to create one immensely confusing one.
The movie isn’t terrible and you could watch it of course, but I just think Guy Ritchie could have done better than an attempt to rip off ‘The Long Good Friday’. It has some redeeming features the most important being the humour, which I must admit I quite enjoyed. Also, London’s underbelly is colourful and although you don’t really see anything new and all the usual myriad accents are present, it’s still a good mix and enjoyable to watch.
But apart from those few redeeming factors ‘RockNRolla’ is disappointing and nothing you haven’t seen before. It was fun the first couple of times but when you keep returning to the same haunts and keep doing the same thing over and over, the charm is lost. Guy Ritchie are you listening,
