A few years and dismissive movies after he had been written off as a one-trick pony, Guy Ritchie proves that he can yet make a decent movie. With RocknRolla, Ritchie goes back to his trick-defining movie Snatch yet steps forward in his career with a mellowed down and grown-up movie, but, relative to his own movies.
RocknRolla is about Sex, Thugs & Rock n Roll, but a very different kind of all of these from what we would immediately expect from any movie, let alone a “Guy Ritchie” movie. The movie doesn’t really have defined protagonist/antagonist characters – it’s about everyone wanting a bit more than they have, and what they have to go through to achieve it. Ritchie refrains from falling into his own traps, possibly with all the will-power he could muster, but still does not leave his trade-mark stylization behind in this labyrinth story where everyone is connected to everyone else. What also helps this movie to elevate itself is the starcast, and among the ensemble, one Mark Strong. He follows a powerful turn in Body of Lies with another omnipresent performance here, well accentuated by Tom Wilkinson, Gerard Butler and Jeremy Piven(!).
The criss-crossing mish-mashing story never missteps and stays intriguing enough to warrant this movie a watch. Unexpectedly, this time Guy Ritchie is not on an adrenaline rush, and lets the movie unfold at a more human pace, though there is one key scene that fans of his stylization will thoroughly enjoy.
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