schemingscoundrels misfits evading the clutches of peril through luck and coincidence in the films of Guy Ritchie
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A GUY RITCHIE FILM FESTIVAL
DANGEROUS COMBINATIONS Misfits evading the clutches of peril through luck and coincidence in the films of Guy Ritchie
Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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schemingscoundrels misfits evading the clutches of peril through luck and coincidence in the films of Guy Ritchie
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Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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A GUY RITCHIE FILM FESTIVAL Nandita Rajan // 041023 Instructor : Hunter Wimmer
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Misfits evading the clutches of peril through luch and coincidence in the films of Guy Ritchie
Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Table of Contents The Festival History
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Schedule
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Venue
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Attractions and Accommodations
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The Director Early Life
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Stylistic Trademarks
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The Interview Swagger Doesn’t Come Easy
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From Geezer to Crowd Pleaser
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The Films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
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Snatch
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Revolver
90
RocknRolla
116
The Man from U.N.C.L.E
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THE FESTIVAL Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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schemingscoundrels misfits evading the clutches of peril through luck and coincidence in the films of Guy Ritchie
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Festival History Scheming Scoundrels is a festival that works toward providing a forum for new film-makers first of its kind, which is a follow up of #MyUnseenCity, a competition about an “urban movie challenge” centered around 15-second short films exhibited on Instagram. The movie challenge will conclude with the 10 most liked films which will then be viewed by a panel, including Guy Ritchie. It is the first installment of a series of yearly festivals. The festival will be held in London and the movies would be screened at London’s Stamford Bridge, which is the stadium of Guy Ritchie’s favorite soccer team. The indoor events would take place at the The Punch Bowl, the pub owned by him. The events will be held over 4 days in March, as it works perfectly with the football season break.
“My principal job is to make interesting and entertaining films, and I’m not proud of which format or which particular technique I use. I just wanted the film to look good.” –Guy Ritchie
Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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I got into film making because I was interested in making entertaining movies, which I felt there was a lack of.
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Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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schemingscoundrels misfits evading the clutches of peril through luck and coincidence in the films of Guy Ritchie
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Schedule Day 1 March 20th,2017 11:00 am - Opening Ceremony 01:00 pm - Lunch at The Punch Bowl 04:00 pm - Screening of “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” at the London’s Stamford Bridge 09:00 pm - Drinks, Dinner and Poker game at
Day 3 March 22nd,2017 01:00 pm - Screening of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E”
The Punch Bowl
Day 2 March 21st,2017
at the London’s Stamford Bridge 04:00 pm - Screening of “Snatch” at the London’s
11:00 am - Talk With Guy Ritchie followed by
Instagram contest entries
01:00 pm - Lunch at The Punch Bowl 04:00 pm - Screening of “RocknRolla” at the London’s Stamford Bridge 09:00 pm - Screening of “Revolver” at the London’s Stamford Bridge 11:00 pm - Drinks and Dinner at The Punch Bowl
Stamford Bridge
09:00 pm - Drinks, Dinner and Speed Chess game at The Punch Bowl
Day 4 March 23rd,2017 01:00 pm - Instagram contest entries, Screening
of the movies
04:00 pm - Winner announced 08:00 pm - Closing Cermony 11:00 pm - Drinks and Dinner and fun games at The Punch Bowl
Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Venue/ Location The movies would be screened at London’s
from Greg Foreman, father of actor Gregory
Stamford Bridge, which is the stadium of Guy
Foreman. In Ritchie and Madonna’s November
Ritchie’s favorite soccer team “Chelsea”. The
2008 divorce settlement, Ritchie gained owner-
indoor events would take place at the The
ship of Madonna’s share of the pub.
Punch Bowl, pub owned by him. The events will be held either from March 20th to 23rd or in the beginning of June 2017.
Stamford Bridge is a football stadium located in Fulham, London. It is the home ground of Chelsea Football Club. The stadium is located within the
The Punch Bowl, at 41 Farm Street, Mayfair, is
Moore Park Estate also known as Walham Green
a London public house, dating from circa 1750.
and is often referred to as simply The Bridge. The
It is listed as Grade II by English Heritage. It is a
capacity is 41,663, making it the eighth largest
Georgian building and, although altered over the
ground in the Premier League. Opened in 1877,
years, retains many period features including a
the stadium was used by the London Athletic Club
dog-leg staircase, internal cornicing and dado
until 1905, when new owner Gus Mears founded
paneling. The pub featured in the documentary
Chelsea Football Club to occupy the ground;
film I’m Going to Tell You a Secret, which followed
Chelsea have played their home games there ever
Madonna in 2004 and showed her and her
since. It has undergone numerous major changes
husband Guy Ritchie on a night out at their “local”.
over the years, most recently in the 1990s when it
In March 2008 the pub was bought for a reputed
was renovated into a modern, all-seater stadium.
£2.5 million by Ritchie and Madonna, with the involvement of the that nightclub entrepreneurs Piers Adam, Nick House, Guy Pelly and tarquin on
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Attraction & Accommodation Places to Visit The Chelsea Museum/Tour
Cineworld Fulham Road
Stamford Bridge , Fulham Road, Fulham,
Fulham Road, London.
London SW6. Brompton Cemetery Fulham Road, Fulham, London SW10. Square One Gallery 592 Kings Road, SW6. Earls Court Exhibition Centre Warwick Rd, Kensington, London SW5 9TA. The Troubadour 263-267 Old Brompton Rd, Earls Court, London SW5 9JA. Campdon Hill Docking Station, Kensington 263-267 Old Brompton Rd, Earls Court, London SW5 9JA. Virgin Active Fulham Pools The Norman Arms, 197 Lillie Rd, London SW6 7ST.
King’s Rd Sloane Square, London. Eel Brook Common Park Kings Road, SW6 2TJ. The Sweatshop 2-8 Dawes Road, Fulham, London. Buckingham Palace London SW1A 1AA. Piccadilly Circus Piccadilly Circus, London W1D 7ET. Hyde Park London W2 2UH. Camden Town Camden Town, Greater London.
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Natural History Museum
River Thames
Cromwell Road, South Kensington,
Westminster Pier, Victoria Embankment, London.
London SW7 5BD. The Chelsea Pensioner 358 Fulham Road, London SW10 9UU. Day Tours London 87 Gloucester Road, London SW7 4SS. Grosvenor Square Mayfair, London W1K 2HP. Berkeley Square Gardens Mayfair, London W1J 5AX. London Eye Lambeth, London SE1 7PB. Churchill War Rooms
Madame Tussaud’s Marylebone Road, London NW1 5. St James’s Park Horse Guards Road, London SW1A 2BJ. Victoria and Albert Museum Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Kensington Gardens West Carriage Drive, London W2 2UH. London Zoo Outer Circle, London NW1 4. Carnaby Street 31 Carnaby Street, London.
Clive Steps, King Charles St, London SW1A 2AQ. Roca Station Court, Imperial Wharf, SW6 2PY.
Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
22 Places to Eat Frankie’s Sports Bar & Diner Stamford Bridge, Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1HS. The Butcher’s Hook 477 Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1HL. Kishmish 448-450 Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1DL. 55 Restaurant Millennium & Copthorne Hotels, Stamford Bridge, Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1HS. Nando’s Fulham Broadway Shopping Centre, Fulham Broadway Retail Centre, Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1BY. El Metro
Bars, Nightlife The Elk Bar 587-591 Fulham Road, London. The Chelsea Ram 32, Chelsea, United Kingdom Chelsea Arts Club 143 Old Church Street, London. Earls Court Tavern 123 Earl’s Court Road, London. Maggie’s Fulham Rd, London, United Kingdom
10-12, Fulham Broadway, Effie Rd,
Azteca Latin Lounge
London SW6 1TB.
329 King’s Road, London SW3 5ES.
The Imperial
The Blackbird
577 King’s Rd, Fulham, London SW6 2EH.
209 Earl’s Court Road, London SW5 9.
The Malt House
White Horse
17 Vanston Pl, Fulham, London SW6 1AY.
1-3 Parsons Green, London.
Tommy Tucker
The Sands End
22 Waterford Rd, Fulham, London SW6 2DR.
135-137 Stephendale Road, London SW6 2PR.
Brasa
Eclipse
474-476 Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1BY.
158 Old Brompton Road, London.
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schemingscoundrels misfits evading the clutches of peril through luck and coincidence in the films of Guy Ritchie
25 Places to Stay Pestana Chelsea Bridge Hotel & Spa
Flying Butler - Earl’s Court Ongar Road
354 Queenstown Rd, London SW8 4AE.
Apartments
Holiday Inn Express London - Earl’s Court 295 North End Rd, London W14 9NS. The Chelsea Harbour Hotel Chelsea Harbour Dr, Fulham, London SW10 0XG. DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel London Chelsea Harbour Dr, Fulham, London SW10 0XG. Travelodge Hotel 290-302 North End Rd, Fulham SW6 1NQ. Hotel Lily 23-33 Lillie Rd, Fulham, London SW6 1UG. Millennium & Copthorne Hotels At Chelsea Football Club Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, London SW6 1HS. 45 Park Lane 45 Park Ln, Mayfair, London W1K 1PN. La Reserve Hotel, London 422-428 Fulham Road, London, England, SW6 1DU. The Malt House 7 Vanston Place, Fulham, London, England, SW6 1AY.
25 Ongar Road, London, England, SW6 1RL, London SW6 1HS. Chelsea Lodge Hotel 268 Fulham Road | Chelsea, London SW10 9EW. Ibis London Earls Court 47 Lillie Road | Earls Court, London SW6 1UD. Alcove Apartments 21 Ongar Road, London SW6 1RL, England. Boka Hotel 33-37 Eardley Crescent, London SW5 9JT, England. Sara Hotel 15 Eardley Crescent | Earl’s Court, London SW5 9JS, England. No 1. The Mansions by Mansley 219 Earls Court Road | Kensington, London SW5 9BN, England. Best Western Boltons Hotel London Kensington 19-21 Penywern Road | Earls Court, London SW5 9TT, England. London Town Hotel 15 Penywern Road, London SW5 9TY, England. Mowbray Court Hotel 28/32 Penywern Road | Earl’s Court, London SW5 9SU, England.
Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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THE DIRECTOR
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Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Guy Ritchie Early Life Guy Ritchie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire,
He soon began helming commercials and music
UK on September 10, 1968. After watching Butch
videos, and then broke into film with his short The
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) as a child,
Hard Case (1995) a twenty minute short film that
Guy realized that what he wanted to do was make
is also the prequel to his debut feature Lock, Stock
films. He left secondary school and got entry-level
and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). Sting’s wife, Trudie
jobs in the film industry in the mid-1990s.
Styler, saw The Hard Case (1995) and invested in
He never attended film school, saying that the
the feature film.
work of film school graduates was boring and
Once completed, ten British distributors turned the
unwatchable. At 15 years old, he dropped out
film down before the film eventually was released in
of school and in 1995. Ritchie, who is dyslexic,
the UK in 1998 and the US in 1999. His short movie
was expelled from Stanbridge Earls School at
was well-received, but Ritchie still found it difficult to
the age of 15. He has stated that drug use was
get backing for a full-length feature and hence was
the reason for the expulsion; his father has said
put on hold. After years of trying, he succeeded:
that it was because his son was caught “cutting
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels came out in
class and entertaining a girl in his room. With few
1998. A crime caper, was applauded for breathing
qualifications, Ritchie ended up taking a series of
new life into that genre, and found a wide audience.
low-level jobs, including work as a bricklayer and as a bartender. When he was 25, a friend who directed commercials hired Ritchie as a runner. That position gave Ritchie an entry into the world of directing.
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The film put Ritchie on the map as one of the hottest rising filmmakers of the time, and launched the careers of actors Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, and Vinnie Jones, among others. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) was followed up by Snatch (2000), with a bigger budget and a few more familiar faces such as Brad Pitt, Dennis Farina, Benicio Del Toro alongside returning actors Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones and Jason Flemyng. The popularity of his first film also brought Guy Ritchie to Hollywood’s attention. His next film, Snatch (2000), was another darkly humorous look at gangsters in London. However, this time the cast included stars like Brad Pitt, Benicio del Toro and Dennis Farina. Snatch was also a critical and commercial success. At the end of 2000, Ritchie married the pop superstar Madonna in Scotland, and proceeded to work with his famous wife on a variety of film and
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video projects, including the short Star (2001),
On 15 December 2008, it was announced by
made for BMW and co-starring Clive Owen, and
Madonna’s spokeswoman that the singer had
the controversial video “What It Feels Like for a
agreed to a divorce settlement with Ritchie, the
Girl,” which was called out for its violence. In 2002
terms of which grant him between £50 million and
the couple embarked on a remake of the 1974
£60 million, a figure that includes the value of the
Lina Wertmüller film Swept Away (2002); the new
couple’s London pub and residence and Wiltshire
film was a critical and commercial flop, winning
estate in England.
five Razzie Awards. Unfortunately for Ritchie, his next feature Swept Away (2002), which starred his then-wife Madonna, was panned by critics and largely avoided by audiences. It was the nadir of Ritchie’s directing career.
Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s marriage was dissolved by District Judge Reid by decree nisi at the clinical Principal Registry of the Family Division in High Holborn, London. Madonna and Ritchie entered into a compromise agreement for Rocco
On 22 December 2000, Guy married American
and David, then ages eight and three respectively,
singer Madonna at Skibo Castle in Scotland. They
and divided the children’s time between Ritchie’s
have a son, Rocco John Ritchie (born 11 August
London home and Madonna’s in New York, where
2000 in Los Angeles) and adopted a Malawian
the two will be joined by her daughter, Lourdes,
baby boy in 2006, David (born 24 September
from a previous relationship.
2005). On 15 October 2008, British media reported that a split was “imminent” between Ritchie and Madonna. The split was confirmed by their spokesperson and Ritchie and Madonna went public with the split because they “can’t bear to live with the pretense any longer”.
On 30 July 2015, Ritchie married model Jacqui Ainsley, whom he has been dating since 2010. They have three children: son Rafael, daughter Rivka, and son Levi.
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Ritchie’s career took off once more with his film adaptation of Sherlock Holmes (2009), as well as its sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011). Both films, starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, were successes at the box office, earning more than $1 billion combined worldwide. The next year saw the release of Sherlock Holmes (2009), starring Robert Downey Jr. in the title role and Jude Law as his cohort Dr. Watson. The film received mostly good reviews but, more importantly for Ritchie’s career, was a solid blockbuster hit that grossed more than $520 million dollars worldwide and spawned a sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011). Ritchie is tentatively scheduled to direct an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In the fall of 2013, Ritchie began filming a big screen adaptation of the spy TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., featuring Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. The film is slated for a mid-August 2015 release.
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Filmography Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - 1998 Snatch - 2000 Mean Machine - 2001 Swept Away - 2002 Revolver - 2005 RocknRolla - 2008 Sherlock Holmes - 2009
Awards Tokyo International Film Festival 1998 - Won - Best Director Award - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” 1998 - Nominated - Tokyo Grand Prix - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” London Critics Circle Film Awards 1999 - Won - British Screenwriter of the Year - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” Evening Standard British Film Awards
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - 2011
1999 - Won- Most Promising Newcomer -
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - 2015
Edgar Allan Poe Awards
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword - 2017
“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)”
2000 - Won - Best Motion Picture - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” Empire Awards, UK 2001 - Won- Best British Director - “Snatch (2000)” Razzie Awards 2003 - Won - Worst Director - “Swept Away (2002)”
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Nominations Torino Film Festival 1998- Nominated - Best Feature Film - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” British Independent Film Awards 1998 - Nominated - Best British Director of an Independent Film - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” 1998 - Nominated - Best Original Screenplay by a British Writer of a Produced Independent Film - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” MTV Movie Awards 1999 - Nominated - Worst Screenplay “Swept Away (2002)” Dinard British Film Festival 2000- Nominated - Golden Hitchcock “Snatch (2000)” Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA 2010 - Nominated - Best Director - “Sherlock Holmes (2009) ” BAFTA Awards 1999 - Nominated - Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film - “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)” Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Stylistic Trademarks Guy Ritchie didn’t attend a prestigious film school,
Next, Ritchie began a big-budget franchise,
or become an understudy of a famous filmmaker
starting with Sherlock Holmes in 2009 and the
to home his craft. Instead, he has worked his way
sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
up from the bottom, literally. He dropped out of
(2011). Both films received moderate to good
secondary school and took a low paying job for a
reviews and became box office hits. Ritchie’s latest
film studio.
film The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is in theaters now.
Over time he made commercials and short films.
High-Octane Action
People liked what they saw, and when he came up
Guy Ritchie injects his films with hard-hitting
with the idea for a feature length film, he was able
fast-moving action sequences. They are
to raise the money he needed for production.
hard-hitting because they are not only violent
That film became Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking
and bloody, but typically involve hand-to-hand
Barrels (1998), which was well received, and even-
combat. Characters frequently fight each other
tually became an international hit. His follow-up
without resorting to guns, and those sequences
was Snatch, which followed a similar premise, but
are often choreographed much like martial arts.
got an added boost from being studio-backed
Bare-fisted boxing is a great example of some-
instead of independently produced. Snatch (2000)
thing that Guy Ritchie uses to make his films more
was also well received and profitable.
visceral, occurring in both Snatch and Sherlock
In 2005, Ritchie attempted to return to his crime film roots with Revolver, but his attempts at changing it up resulted in terrible reviews and a box office bomb. Ritchie had a return to form of sorts with 2008’s RocknRolla, which received mixed reviews, but ended up being profitable.
Holmes. His action scenes are fast-moving and full of energy because of the way they are filmed. Sometimes Ritchie uses high-speed photography to slow things down at critical moments to create more of an impact, as seen in both of the Sherlock Holmes movies. In Revolver during Sorter’s shoot-out scene, in the same shootout.
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This technique simplifies the sequence and makes it move smoothly while highlighting the importance of the Sorter. He uses editing tricks during some of the action moments in The Man From U.N.C.L.E., as well, in order to show the actions of the two protagonists concurrently. Quick Jump Cut Sequences Quick cuts allow Ritchie to show a character performing an action that may not be that important to the plot, but is useful for building context or to help the audience better understand the synopsis of the character. The opening to RocknRolla is a great example. The narrator is explaining what might drive a person to live their life as a “RocknRolla”. Sex, drugs, thrills. Then it shows all of those things in quick succession before presenting the title card. Ritchie uses quick jump sequences like a montage too, to show characters preparing for an event or to explain the passage of time.
Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Circular and Interconnected Plots Ritchie’s films take their audiences hostage. They tend to be more about the experience than the destination. Ritchie ignores a traditional exposition, instead starting mid-stride and begging the audience to catch up. His plots tread on familiar territory, often having moments that loop back in time in order to show a different perspective of an important event that just occurred as an explanation of what happened. The entire plot of Sherlock Holmes is one giant loop. The film starts off with Holmes and Watson successfully completing a case. The result of Holmes’ success ends up leading to an even bigger crisis, which is the focus of the film. At the end, though, Holmes has to explain what really happened during that initial event in order for the audience to fully understand everything else that has happened up to the end. The aftermath of this initial catalyst is what sets up the rest of the film, and in the end, is somehow related to the climax. These films feature several sets of characters. The relationships between these groups of characters is what drives the film forward. The film focuses on one group at a time, jumping from one to another when an important event occurs. This weaves a complicated web of connections which ultimately leads to a climax that is related to the beginning of the film. Colorful Characters Guy Ritchie’s films are full of vibrant and memorable characters. There is rarely, if ever anyone, who you could consider normal. It doesn’t matter what side of the law they are on or how low or high in the ranks of the organization that they are.
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Richie knows how to make interesting energetic characters, and they are the heart of his films. From the dumb group of robbers to the short-tempered crime boss “Hatchet” Harry in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, to the fast-witted and egotistical portrayal of the most famous detective of all time by Robert Downey Jr. in the two Sherlock Holmes films. In Revolver, the main characters are representative of themes and perspectives of the ego. In Snatch, the most memorable character is probably Brad Pitt’s Mickey O’Neil, a hot-headed Irish boxer who is purposefully difficult to understand in an almost comical way. Filtered Overlays By tinting his films certain colors, Ritchie can create a tone. The opening setting that takes place in Berlin in The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is dark and faded, which makes it feel cold and unfriendly. Indeed, this is a good representation of the relationship between the US and Soviet Union at that time, which helps to make the actions of Napoleon Solo in that scene seem that much more impressive. Ritchie often uses colored overlays to differentiate between different settings. In Game of Shadows Ritchie uses a blue color for the setting of the final showdown at the peace summit in Switzerland. The blue color is meant to differentiate this place from the other settings in the film. Once again the tone is cold, much like the relationship between the two adversaries. He also uses dim lighting throughout, especially the chess match as a literal interpretation of the film’s title. Flashbacks especially tend to use different color sets than the main time-line in order for the audience to easily see the difference and understand the transition.
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THE INTERVIEW Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Swagger doesn’t come easy Article by Matt Patches “Cool” is a delicate cachet. It can’t be forced, but
In the director’s mind, what I keep referring to
must be owned. Cool emerges from effortless
as “cool” (which, just a heads up, is not a cool
effort. One overeager demonstration can sour the
thing to do) is that expression—a twist on reality
stature in an instant. Director Guy Ritchie stresses
through the synthesis of style. Commercials
over this balancing act. “The danger of being cool
taught him how to mine for these moments. In an
is when the shine becomes a shade of smug,”
ad, a director only has 90 seconds to nail a tone
the director tells Esquire. “I’m obsessed with not
and sweep up the audience. The idea transfixed
becoming smug. And I’m obsessed with my actors
Ritchie early in his career. Could he stretch that
not being so cool that they become, for lack of a
kernel of cool into an entire film? He’s been
better word, ‘cunts.’”
experimenting with the idea for 20 years.
Ritchie makes cool movies. Not in the I’m-too-lazy-
If there’s such a status as “objectively cool,”
to-summon-a-specific-adjective way, but in the
Ritchie’s latest film out this weekend, Man from
maybe-this-is-the-definition-of-slick way. Cool. In
U.N.C.L.E., strolls up to the abstracts edge like
films like Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,
Cary Grant incarnate. Based on the ‘60s television
Snatch, and Sherlock Holmes, Ritchie flips the bird
series of the same name, U.N.C.L.E. conducts its
to relentless style-over-substance criticisms. For
blockbuster business like a suit maker.Every step
the 46-year-old Brit, style is substance. It’s not
is measured, every dash of color woven in with
just what men do in his films, it’s how they do it.
care, every gun-toting infiltration trimmed to its
“I happen to think visual aesthetic is fundamental
essential parts.
because I want to be nudged out of prosaic reality into some version of poetic expression,” Ritchie says to me over lunch at New York City’s fittingly sleek Bowery Hotel garden.
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Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Ask Ritchie once what gives his movies a center
“He’ll make gestures that are silly, but simultane-
of cool gravity and he’ll chalk it up to gut instincts.
ously cool. We debated: Is that silly or cool? As
Ask him twice (again, not cool) and the director’s
long as [the gestures] are manifested by the right
calculations come to light. For U.N.C.L.E., it was
agent, they become silly and cool.
all about Napoleon Solo. But unlike every other lead character from Ritchie’s career, Solo was American. That was a problem for the director.
Silly is what keeps cool from having the unpleasant odor of smug.” Ritchie wouldn’t have made U.N.C.L.E. if he couldn’t embed the action
“We made a conscious effort to make him
in 1960s Italy. On one hand, he wanted to force
European cool.” European cool? “Table manners,
himself to change his act. Super slow-motion is
really.” Ritchie gets American cool—the James
one of Ritchie’s go-to maneuvers. In U.N.C.L.E.
Dean vibe, maybe a blue-collar ruggedness—but
there was a conscious effort to avoid it, replaced
it doesn’t appeal to him. He wanted his Solo to be
by mod split-screen, shaggy zooms, and, occasion-
a man with a sense of style, a dash of camp, and a
ally, nothing at all. After deciding that a majority of
few world destinations stamped in his passport.
boat chases look awful, Ritchie decided to modify
“I love Americans who spent time in Europe”.
the one he wrote for the movie.
It was moments like when Solo performs the
“The idea of being out for a week, shooting
classic tablecloth trick that kept Ritchie up at
something that no one gave a cuss about,
night. Cool or smug? “It was important that a man
quickly became about something else—I wasn’t
is prepared to look like a tick because he’s got
interested in an action beat.” What he designed
swagger,” the director says.
instead is the movie’s shining moment: a lively sequence in which Solo dines on a picnic lunch
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while Kuryakin, seen only through the reflection of
rewriting the rulebook on cool.” Which he’s doing
a truck window, outruns a fleet of speedboat-en-
at this very moment—with the movie’s New York
abled bad guys who want him dead. Cool.
premiere behind, Ritchie is readying to resume
The period setting also gave Ritchie the freedom to luxuriate in a different walk of life. There were the film making perks—as a lover of early Bond
work on his in-production fantasy film Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur. It’s been a challenge. King Arthur is a good guy.
movies, the director wanted to give his movie the
Good guys are boring, he says. So how do you
same cobbled-together feel of the Sean Connery
give Arthur an edge? Tether his tale to kids
entries—and the pace that made European Cool.
coming out of canceled flats in London. Make
Once, while staying at George Clooney’s Lake Como villa during a commercial shoot, Ritchie watched several Italian builders on their lunch break. “Their lunch spread was so sophisticated,” he recalls in awe. There were tablecloths, there were linen napkins, there were three types of
life harder. He may not fit in a fancy suit or sip Campari and grapefruit by the racetracks, but he can still be cool. “We’re trying to capture something that we think the Arthur parable was about,” Ritchie says. He snaps his fingers. There it is. That’s the tone. Cool.
bread, there were cheeses from various regions, there was specificity. He could only dream of making Napoleon Solo that cool. Ritchie insists there is no objective cool, no matter how much U.N.C.L.E. seems to own it in the eyes of this less-than-cool reporter. “It comes in all sorts of manifestations,” he says. “You can keep Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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From Geezer To Crowd-Pleaser Article by Robbie Collin Guy Ritchie’s films are now unfashionable enough
which is out next week, and presumably also his
to be fun again. I’m aware that doesn’t sound like
King Arthur film, which will arrive in cinemas next
much of a compliment, so here’s a slightly nicer
year. But his debut feature, Lock, Stock and Two
way of putting it. Ritchie’s early, career-making
Smoking Barrels – a tumbling, scabrous crime
movies are so inseparable from the Cool Britannia
comedy in which half of London’s underworld
culture that came to define British pop culture in
chases a pair of antique shotguns and £500,000
the late Nineties and early 2000s, that in order to
of drug money – was Ritchie served neat in a dirty
understand what’s really worthwhile about them,
glass. And when it was released in the summer of
we’ve had to wait not just for the party to run its
1998, its effect on film making in this country was
course, but the hangover too.
instant and unmissable.
No modern British director has made quite the
For years, Britpop bands like Oasis and Ocean
same impact on our culture with quite as much
Colour Scene had been lucratively casting back to
speed – and then been reviled with quite so
the sounds and styles of the Sixties. What Ritchie
much energy for doing so. We’re now almost two
did was fit the same rose-tinted lens on our
decades into Ritchie’s career, in what might be
national cinema. At the time he was often likened
called phase three.
to Quentin Tarantino, the upstart Yank whose
Starting with Sherlock Holmes in 2009, he’s embarked on a series of mainstream studio movies that have dialed back the Ritchiness while still retaining a distinctly British flavor. These include his latest project, a feature-length remake of the Sixties TV spy series The Man From UNCLE,
Pulp Fiction had won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1994, pulling the trigger on a revolution in American cinema.
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But beyond a shared love of motor-mouthing gangsters, the two directors had almost nothing in common. (Ritchie has only egregiously ripped off Tarantino twice: once with Alan Ford’s “Do you know what ‘nemesis’ means?” speech in Snatch, which was a transparent attempt to recreate Samuel L. Jackson’s Ezekiel 25:17 moment in Pulp Fiction, and once with the Kill Bill-mimicking animated interlude in Revolver, the less said about which the better.) Tarantino’s work was a stew of obscure trash cinema, French New Wave cool and Hong Kong action, but the films that appeared to have shaped Lock, Stock were ones you’d see if you turned on the television on a bank holiday weekend. It’s 100 percent British beef, culled from a range of venerable herds. It brought the buoyant mood of ensemble capers like The Italian Job and The Lavender Hill Mob to the shifting London landscape of noirish thrillers like Night and the City and The Long Good Friday.
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Its bravura and backbone came from swaggering
But they were leaner, scrappier, almost exclusively
dramas of alpha-male-hood like Alfie and
masculine, far more badly behaved, and
Performance, but it was softened with the same
working-class down to the marrow. The most
kind of infectious energy of Richard Lester’s
persistent criticism levelled at Ritchie’s work is
Beatles films – and perhaps even brushed by the
that the director is a “mockney”, with roots in
manic comedy of the BBC radio series,
a far more elevated social strata than his East
The Goon Show, with its thickly accented cast of half-recognizable grotesques. It’s his irony-free affection for popular mid-century movie culture that makes Ritchie’s The Man From UNCLE makes perfect sense. He might be the only director
End-based characters: he grew up in the Home Counties, was privately schooled, and his parents both married into the aristocracy after their divorce. You can’t imagine this being a source of anxiety anywhere other than Britain.
working today who’s capable of warming up the
What Boyle also brought to the party, which
source material.
Ritchie went on to gleefully pilfer, was the
Back in the Lock, Stock days, Ritchie’s contemporaries were Danny Boyle, Nick Love and Shane Meadows – and, to a lesser extent, Edgar Wright, Jonathan Glazer, and Ritchie’s old producing partner Matthew Vaughn. He started work on Lock, Stock in 1995, adapting it from his own 20-minute short film Hard Case, with money invested in part by Trudie Styler (which explains the presence of husband, Sting, in the film). By this point Boyle and Meadows were already in business: Boyle’s first feature, Shallow Grave had won a Bafta that year, while Meadows was shooting his own debut, a crime comedy called Small Time, in Nottingham.Those films felt as intensely British as the likes of Four Weddings and a Funeral and a run of genteel period dramas crowned by Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, which had been box-office hits in the early Cool Britannia days.
aggressively snappy visual style that was flourishing in the British TV advertising and music-video businesses in the early Nineties. The style was pioneered in part by Jonathan Glazer – Blur’s Clockwork Orange-inspired video for The Universal and the iconic Guinness surfer ad were both his – and Glazer would make his own Cool Britannia film, Sexy Beast, in 2000, before Birth and Under the Skin took him into stranger, more threatening territory.
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The bursts of slow-motion and fast-motion, freeze-frames and quick cuts were ideal for Ritchie’s purposes. They were visceral fun, but they also allowed him to keep his characters’ hearts and souls at arm’s length. When Vinnie Jones’s mob enforcer Big Chris solemnly intones “It’s been emotional” at the end of Lock, Stock, the moment works as a self-aware punchline – because, of course, it hasn’t. But the lack of emotional depth to Lock, Stock’s storyline was more than made up for by the brio of its telling. Ritchie’s screenplay juggles four separate gangs, plus various supporting hoodlums and scumbags, with total ease. And his dialogue, with its boozy blend of street slang, patter and patois, is endlessly quotable and frequently hilarious. Even the character names were jokes: Lock, Stock and its 2000 follow-up, Snatch, introduce us to the likes of Barry the Baptist (so-called for his penchant for drownings), Boris the Blade (a.k.a. Boris the Bullet-Dodger), Franky Four Fingers, Bullet-Tooth Tony, Bacon and Soap. Lock, Stock’s story is a moral one, but it finds a rich seam of black humour in its characters’ moral failings, and its cliffhanger ending – a proud callback to The Italian Job’s teetering bus – leaves them suspended, like the East End gangland equivalent of Schrödinger’s Cat, between glorious success and even more glorious failure.
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Like Boyle’s Shallow Grave and Meadows’ Dead Man’s Shoes, you could backdate the story by 600 years and it would fit very snugly into The Canterbury Tales, alongside the tricky lodgers, swindling millers and drunken young gamblers prepared to take a life for a quick buck. (New British cinema has conspicuously abandoned this type of plot for far more oblique, European-influenced styles of storytelling. Perhaps the closest it’s come in recent years is Ben Wheatley’s Kill List: a tale that would have probably got Chaucer burned at the stake.) If Boyle’s Trainspotting felt like an agitative jab-jab-jab to polite British cinema on its release in 1996, Lock, Stock was the haymaker. It made £18 million on a budget of less than £1 million, which in turn made Snatch, Ritchie’s almost identically toned 2000 follow-up, an inevitability. The presence of international stars like Brad Pitt and Benicio Del Toro among the expected British cast members was all the proof needed that Ritchie had made it abroad. But at home, his style had become familiar enough to be spoofable. The most memorable sketch in The Fast Show’s 2000 Christmas special was a trailer for a non-existent film called It’s A Right Royal Cockney Barrel of Monkeys, a London-set caper movie featuring characters with names like Tommy Pockets and Davey Hairbrush, Fatboy Slim’s Gangster Tripping on the soundtrack, and the following immortal line of
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dialogue, growled by Simon Day’s mob boss from
Whatever agendas were at play, though, there’s
the back of an Audi: “What, that rotter? He turned
no explaining away Columbia Tristar’s decision
up at my cousin’s funeral wearing white jeans. The
to bury Swept Away in the UK. Ritchie’s first two
maggot.” Meanwhile, the genre Lock, Stock had
films had made almost £25 million between them
revived was already turning sour.
at the British box-office, so for his third to bypass
Eased into existence by Lottery money, a growing tide of terrible British gangster films was flooding
cinemas completely meant the situation must have been serious.
cinemas. Snatch had arrived in cinemas in the
That said, the film can be enjoyed today as a camp
summer of 2000 riding on the coattails of three
curio: while Madonna can’t act, compared to
of the very worst: Ordinary Decent Criminal,
Adriano Giannini, her Italian co-star, she’s Barbara
Rancid Aluminium and Love Honour and Obey, an
Stanwyck. The real knockout blow to the director’s
acridly smug, half-improvised mess and the nadir
career came in 2005, with the release of Revolver
of the craze.To Ritchie’s credit, he immediately
– a film that was nothing like his earlier gangster
abandoned gangster movies to try something
comedies, or Swept Away, or much else.
different. The only hitch was that his next two films were both awful. The first was Swept Away, a sado-masochistic romance and remake of a Lina Wertmüller film from the Seventies, with his then-wife Madonna in the lead role.
Ritchie’s mooted “comeback film” was an all-but-unwatchable existential heist picture set in a quasi-mythical version of Las Vegas: imagine Inception if it had been written and directed by a wombat. While few people actually saw it (the
In interviews, Madonna suggested that the
film vanished from cinemas in three weeks), the
negative reaction to the film was a backlash
surrounding publicity tour was damaging. Ritchie’s
against Ritchie’s prior success – and, by extension,
in-depth explanations of the film’s use of number
their high-profile marriage. In the context of that
and colour symbolism from the then-popular
relationship, Ritchie’s casting of her just about
Kabbalah cult (Madonna was a disciple) only
makes sense. In the film’s DVD commentary,
seemed to confirm suspicions that he’d become
taped before the film’s cinematic release, the
lost in some far-flung show-business nebula.
director says quite sweetly that he hopes his wife’s character’s journey – from foul-tempered socialite to considerate lover, via a spell on a desert island with a muscly Italian serf – might help rehabilitate her in the eyes of her critics.
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The trends he’d single-handedly kick-started were
The DC projects were moved to the back burner,
also turning sour. The Lock, Stock-aping crime
and replaced by two Sherlock Holmes films with
capers had morphed into sullen “geezer-pleasers”
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, both of which
– football hooligan films and gangland massacre
were international hits. Next came The Man From
movies, with Danny Dyer replacing Statham as the
UNCLE, with Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer,
genre’s figurehead.
which is released next week, followed by Knights
Nick Love stayed the course with films like The
of the Roundtable: King Arthur in 2016.
Football Factory and The Business. Danny Boyle
As such, Ritchie is a survivor of his own success.
broke free by parlaying his hyperactive style into
Even more than Boyle, his style translates well
genre cinema – first horror, in 28 Days Later and
to a blockbuster canvas – we just have to push
Sunshine, then triumphs of the human spirit
through the muddy memories of TFI Friday,
stories (Slumdog Millionaire, 127 Hours) that
Loaded magazine, the Primrose Hill set and Tracy
made him an Oscar-winner. Shane Meadows and
Emin’s bed to realise it’s a style worth cherishing.
Edgar Wright kept doing what Shane Meadows
If you’re at a loose end tonight, and the DVDs
and Edgar Wright always had, and their fans
are close to hand, put on Lock, Stock or Snatch.
remained faithful. British cinema was in dire
They’re more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
need of a rebirth. When Joanna Hogg made the haunting, angular family drama Unrelated in 2007 – arguably the first film of the present golden age of independent British film – its title said it all. Ritchie needed a rebirth, too, and to the surprise of some, it came quickly. The prolific American producer Joel Silver reached out to him in early 2007, with a view to bringing him into the fold at Warner Bros. to work on planned adaptations of the DC Comics properties Lobo and Sgt. Rock. Ritchie’s relationship with Warners began with what was effectively a soft reset of his film making circuits: he was given £10 million and came back with RocknRolla, a serviceable, London-set ensemble mob caper in the style of his early work. Crucially, it made a profit.
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THE FILMS
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Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Plot/ Synopsis Director
Guy Ritchie
Writers
Guy Ritchie
Producers Stars
Matthew Vaughn Benicio Del Toro Dennis Farina Vinnie Jones Brad Pitt Jason Statham Rade Serbedzija
Music Cinematography Editor Release date
Long-time friends; Bacon, Soap, Tom and Eddie decide to put together £100,000 to play 3 card brag against “Hatchet” Harry Lonsdale - a porn king of notorious disposition - in a high-stakes card game in the hopes of winning easy money. Aided by Barry “the Baptist”, Harry’s personal bodyguard and counselor, the game is fixed so that Eddie, the card shark representing the group, loses to Harry and is forced to pay a £500,000 debt within one week, citing the loss of fingers and Eddie’s father’s bar if he fails to pay. To Eddie’s fortune, and the dismay of his friends, all four of the group are tasked with honoring this debt, as they were all responsible for fronting the stake money. Harrys loyal and violent debt collector, Big Chris - who often brings his son and apprentice, Little Chris, to his work - is assigned to collect the payment
John Murphy
on the due date.
Tim Maurice-Jones
After several days and no ideas to come up with the money, Eddie returns
Jon Harris 23 August 2000
home and overhears his neighbors, a gang of thieves known for robbing drug dealers, planning a heist on some marijuana growers supposedly loaded with cash and drugs. Eddie relays this information to the group, intending for all of them to rob the neighbors as they come back from their heist, therefore solving the debt. Tom uses his connection with an underground dealer, known as Nick “the Greek”, to provide them with guns for the job, and to find someone to help them move the drugs. Nick then manages to acquire a pair of antique shotguns, and arrange a deal with Rory Breaker, a gangster and sociopath, to purchase the stolen weed.
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Prior to the card game, a pair of lowlife criminals, Gary and Dean, were hired by Barry to rob a bankrupt millionaire for Harry, who wanted a specific pair of antique shotguns from the stolen pile for his personal collection. The two guns that Harry wanted, however, were the ones that Gary and Dean sold prematurely to Nick after the robbery. An enraged Barry then threatens the two into getting them back. The neighbors’ heist goes underway; Dog, the leader of the gang, learned of the weed chemists from one of the members, and uses his connections to the group to catch them off guard. Despite having a gang member killed by his own Bren Gun, and an incriminating encounter with a traffic warden, the job is otherwise a success. Unfortunately as they come back to the hideout, the four friends ambush the neighbors and take the loot, who later return that night to stash the goods next door, and then celebrate with a wild night of drinking. The various characters finally collide when Rory discovers that the weed he was going to purchase was in fact his; the weed chemists that were robbed were under his employ. Rory interrogates Nick into revealing where the four friends live, and uses one of the chemists to identify the robbers.
Ritchie’s colour-desaturated style, use of unusual background music, scattershot slang (some subtitled) and mostly tasteful black comedy give the whole film the feel of an altered state of perception, whether it be Eddy’s shaky devastation at running up the debt or the various spells of drunkenness, dope trancing or adrenalin rush that smite all characters. And it ends with the best bit of dangling since The Italian Job.
That same morning, Dog has become furious at having been cheated and, during a tirade, he launches one of his men into a wall, who discovers (through the hole he makes as a result) various sound recording equipment;
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Dog realizes that his neighbors were the ones
Big Chris then crashes into their car to disable
who robbed him, and has the men prepare to
Dog, and after brutalizing him with his car door,
ambush the friends in the flat as he takes the
he takes the debt money back from the uncon-
antique shotguns and counts the money. Gary
scious friends, only to find his employer dead,
and Dean call Nick, who (in frustration) directs
and Tom just about to make off with the antique
them to the same address in their search for the
shotguns, which he’d briefly paused to examine.
antique shotguns, while Big Chris and his son depart to collect the debt, and the four friends drive home from the bar.
The remaining friends were arrested, but were declared innocent after the traffic warden from earlier identified the neighbors bodies as the
Rory and his gang assault the flat and enter a
prime suspects. The four reunite at Eddies fathers
shootout with the neighbors, resulting in the
bar, and decide to have Tom get rid of the only
deaths of all but Dog and the lone chemist to
evidence linking them to all the bloodshed the
survive the slaughter, with the latter taking off
shotguns. After Tom leaves, Big Chris arrives to
with the marijuana. Dog is mugged by Big Chris of
bid them farewell, and gives them a catalog on
the shotguns and money during his escape, Gary
antique guns. Big Chris then leaves, having kept
and Dean stealthily follow Big Chris, and the four
the debt money for himself and his son. A quick
friends finally return to the flat, shocked by the
perusal of the book reveals that the shotguns the
carnage and the missing loot. Big Chris then gives
four had bought for the job were each worth a
the guns and cash to Harry, and as he returns to
fortune, and so they desperately try to call Tom.
his car he encounters Dog threatening his son,
The film ends in a cliffhanger when Toms cell
who wants him to get the loot back from Harry.
phone, stuffed in his mouth, starts ringing as he
Desperate to get the guns, Gary and Dean attack
hangs over the side of a bridge, preparing to drop
Harry and Barry at their office, realizing who they
the shotguns into the River Thames.
were at the last minute before killing each other in another violent shootout. The four friends soon arrive to find another scene of carnage, and takethe opportunity to re-steal the debt money, mystified by their strange fortune.
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Review by Roger Ebert Guy Ritchie made a smashing directorial debut
over a pub belonging to Eddy’s father (Sting).
with Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The film
What to do? Eddy and his mates eavesdrop on
centered around four low life protagonists ( Jason
neighbors in the next flat--criminals who are
Statham & co.) who get entangled in a high stakes
planning to rob a rich drug dealer. Meanwhile,
card game. Guy Ritchie uses a rapidly paced
Barry assigns two dimwits to steal a couple of
narrative , multiple characters , great dialogue to
priceless antique shotguns for Harry.
give us a memorable movie . With this movie he established a definitive style of his, which he used to great effect in his other movies as well.
The shotguns end up in the hands of Eddy and friends, who steal the drug money from the other thieves, and then--but you get the idea. Or maybe
The card game which is the turning point of the
you don’t. The movie, which is an enormous
film is brilliantly shot with a dizzying editing effect
hit in Britain, had its American premiere at the
aptly summing up the protagonist’s perplexed
Sundance Film Festival, where I lost track of the
state of mind. Ritchie should also be credited for
plot and some of the dialogue. Seeing it again
introducing us to two charismatic actors Jason
recently, I found the dialogue easier to under-
Statham and ex-footballer Vinnie Jones. Vinnie
stand, and the labyrinthine plot became a little
Jones is particularly memorable in his role as
clearer--although it’s designed to fold back upon
‘Big Chris’ the hit-man who takes his son ‘Little
itself with unexpected connections.The actors
Chris‘ for some on the job training. The film also
seem a little young for this milieu; they seem to
features a host of other shady characters who
be playing grown-up. Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs’’
represent a part of the seedy London underworld.
had characters with mileage on them, played by
The movie is about a poker player named Eddy
veterans like Harvey Keitel, Lawrence Tierney and
(Nick Moran), who is bankrolled by three friends
Michael Madsen. But the heroes of “Lock’’ (Jason
for a high-stakes game with Hatchet Harry (P.H.
Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Jason Statham and
Moriarity), a gambling and porn kingpin.
Moran) seem a little downy-cheeked to be moving
Harry cheats, Eddy runs up an enormous debt, and Harry’s giant enforcer, Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean), explains that he will start chopping fingers if the friends don’t pay up--or
in such weathered circles.
Eddie: “They’re armed.” Soap: “What was that? Armed? What do you mean armed? Armed with what?” Eddie: “Err, bad breath, colorful language, feather duster… what do you think they’re gonna be armed with? Guns, you tit!”
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And as the cast expands to include the next-door
where you naturally play Spot the Influence:
neighbors and the drug dealers, there are times
Tarantino, of course, and a dash of Hong
when, frankly, we wish everybody would wear
Kong action pictures, and the old British crime
name tags (“Hi! I’m the effete ganja grower!’’)
comedies like “The Lavender Hill Mob.’’
I was convinced, however, by Harry and Barry-
The director, Guy Ritchie, says his greatest
-and also by Harry’s collector, Big Chris, who is
inspiration was “The Long Good Friday’’ (1980), the
played by a soccer star named Vinnie Jones who
Cockney crime movie that made a star out of Bob
became famous for squeezing in his vice-like
Hoskins. Lurking beneath all the other sources,
grip that part of an opponent’s anatomy that
I suspect, is “Night and the City’’ (1950), Jules
most quickly gains his full attention. They seem
Dassin’s masterful noir, also about crime in the
plausible as East End vice retailers--seamy,
East End, also with a crime kingpin who employs
cynical, middle-aged professionals in a heartless
a giant bruiser. By the end of it all, as you’re
business. I also liked the movie’s sense of fun. The
reeling while trying to make sense of the plot,
soundtrack uses a lot of rock music and narration
“Lock, Stock, etc.’’ seems more like an exercise
to flaunt its attitude, it keeps most of the violence
in style than anything else. And so it is. We don’t
off-screen, and it’s not above throwaway gags.
care much about the characters (I felt more actual
While Eddy plays poker, for example, his three
affection for the phlegmatic bouncer, Barry the
friends go next door to a pub.
Baptist, than for any of the heroes).We realize that
A man on fire comes staggering out of the door. They look at him curiously, shrug, and go in. The pub is named Samoa Joe’s, which seems like a
the film’s style stands outside the material and is lathered on top (there are freeze frames, jokey subtitles, speed-up and slo-mo).
sideways nod to “Pulp Fiction’’. I sometimes feel, I confess, as if there’s a Tarantino reference in every third movie made these days. “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’’ is the kind of movie of
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And that the characters are controlled by the demands of the clockwork plot.“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’’ is like Tarantino crossed with the Marx Brothers, if Groucho had been into chopping off fingers. It’s a bewilderingly complex caper film, set among the low-lifes of London’s East End, and we don’t need to be told that the director used to make TV commercials; we figure that out when a cook throws some veggies into water, and the camera shoots up from the bottom of the pot. But “Lock, Stock’’ is fun, in a slapdash way; it has an exuberance, and in a time when movies follow formulas like zombies, it’s alive. Of all the recent attempts to put a Tarantinoid spin on the British gangster movie, this is the freshest and most successful. It is, at heart, an extended shaggy dog story, as is revealed by snippets of cockney narration that introduce
Hatchet Harry: “You must be Eddie, J.D.’s son. Eddie: “You must be Harry. Sorry, didn’t know your father.” Hatchet Harry: “Never mind, son. You just might meet him if you carry on like that.”
minor characters or prod the plot along, but writer-director Guy Ritchie and his cast have enough freestyle energy and bizarre confidence to get away with it. Set entirely in a fantasy East End where women almost don’t exist and shot through a drunken haze, it creates a world related to reality and to old crime movies but also self-contained and original.
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A minute ago this was the safest job in the world. Now it’s turning into a bad day in Bosnia.
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12 Fascinating Facts Now he’s the guy who makes those frenetic
You had all these mid-level executives sitting
Sherlock Holmes movies and used to be married
there, and Cruise walked in. He saw them all sit
to Madonna. But Guy Ritchie was once the guy
up and pay attention,all getting on their phones
who made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,
and suddenly all these senior executives joined
a smash hit in England, a cult hit in the U.S., and
the screening … At the end, Tom got up in front of
the instigator of a new cycle of rough British crime
everyone and said ‘This is the best movie I’ve seen
comedies. Not bad for a guy’s first feature film.
in years, you guys would be fools not to buy it.’
Grab a cup of tea and enjoy these tidbits about some of London’s most unsavory characters.
3.Brad Pitt was a fan, thats why he’s in Snatch!
1.Mrs.Sting helped get it made.
When Mr. Jolie sees a movie he loves, he’s been
Trudie Styler, a producer, actress, and wife of
known to call the person who made it. That’s
Sting, found the screenplay in the mid-1990s and
exactly what he did with Guy Ritchie. “He called
basically loved it. What she didn’t love was the
me and told me that he wanted to be part of
presentation: “It wasn’t an easy read,” she said. “It
whatever I was doing next,” the director said. That
was a very long, rambling screenplay with terrible
turned out to be Snatch. Pitt and Ritchie remain
typos, and really poorly presented.” Fortunate-
friends to this day (or to the day of that 2013
ly, the substance of what Ritchie was trying to
Esquire interview, anyway).
achieve shone through his inelegant presentation. He’d also made a short film, “The Hard Case,” that showed Styler his potential.
4. The budget started at £20,000,000 and was gradually reduced to £800,000. The initial budget was probably unrealistic for a
2.Tom Cruise helped get it released in the
first-time filmmaker anyway, though it’s indicative
United States.
of how highly regarded Ritchie’s screenplay was
The film was having trouble finding an American
After a flurry of excitement, and even some
distributor when Trudie Styler called an acquain-
auditions and casting, much of the financing fell
tance of hers, a movie star named Tom Cruise.
through and the project was postponed. Ritchie
Cruise went to the screening, surrounded by suits
started making cuts and found new backers,
and number-crunchers, and was a vocal and en-
but it took a couple years. By that time, the slick
thusiastic viewer. Producer Matthew Vaughn later
production had become a scrappy, low-budget
recalled, “It was hysterical.
one, which probably better suited the underdog tone of the story anyway.
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5.The joke about someone forgetting to bring the guns was added because, someone forgot to bring the guns! “Have you forgotten those guns, you dozy prat?” Bacon (Jason Statham) asks when the guys are preparing to rob the other gang of robbers, about 73 minutes into the film. As it turns out, someone had indeed neglected to bring the prop guns to the set that day. With no time to retrieve them, Ritchie had Statham make a joke out of it. 6.Jason Statham was selling fake perfume on the street when Guy Ritche found him. Statham was doing some modeling work in the mid-1990s, but to supplement his income he also sold fake jewelry and perfume on street corners—“hustling,” as he put it. It was in this capacity that he was introduced to Ritchie, who needed a con artist for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and who’d already cast Statham’s friend, Vinnie Jones. It was the beginning of Statham’s acting career, and presumably the end of his fake-perfume-and-jewelry-vending career. 7. Ray Winston was supposed to play Hatchet Harry. The English character actor was originally cast in the role, but had to drop out when the aforementioned delays screwed up the schedule. He was replaced by P.H. Moriarty.
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8.It got a new ending after the
None of the movie’s cast members were involved,
test screenings.
and all of the characters except Bacon were
The movie originally left things open-ended, with
renamed (or maybe it’s a different Bacon, who
the four main characters walking off with the
knows?). Guy Ritchie co-wrote the pilot but other-
money and Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) and his son
wise was not heavily involved.
about to follow them to get it back. Test audiences didn’t care for it. Scrambling, Ritchie came up with the new, more elaborate finale (written “on the back of a [cigarette] packet,” according to star Nick Moran, who played Eddy), and the cast was reassembled to film it some months after the initial shoot had ended. One problem: Jason Flemyng, who plays Tom, had grown his hair out for another project and couldn’t cut it, which is why Tom wears a stocking cap in the last several minutes of the movie.
10. Madonna liked the soundtrack so much she released it on her record label (and then married the director) The Queen of Pop was among the movie’s famous fans, and was particularly fond of its eclectic Brit-rock soundtrack. She contacted Ritchie and producer Matthew Vaughn and asked if her label, Maverick, could release the film’s soundtrack in the U.S. Ritchie said she “wined and dined” them in Hollywood a few times, but that it was Vaughn she was romantically interested in, not him. Ma-
9.Supermodel Claudia Schiffer was left on
donna and Ritchie did start dating, though. They
the cutting room floor.
were married in 2000 (and divorced in 2008)
She played Eddy’s girlfriend but was cut from the film entirely after test screenings. (The movie doesn’t have much use for female characters in general.) Happy ending, though: it was here that she met producer Matthew Vaughn, whom she later married.
10.Of the 44 speaking roles, at least 17 were played by people who’d never acted before To get the film made, Ritchie called in favors and even put crew members to work in front of the camera. He also cast a lot of unknown (read: inexpensive) fledgling actors. A handful of them, like
10. It was turned into a TV show.
Statham and former soccer player Vinnie Jones,
Lock, Stock (as it was called) ran for seven
went on to have acting careers. Several others
episodes in the U.K. in the summer of 2000,
didn’t, either staying behind the scenes or leaving
centering on the occasionally criminal adventures
the business altogether..
of four friends who run a London pub called The Lock, just like the movie.
Eddy: “They’re armed.” Soap: “What was that? Armed? What do you mean armed? Armed with what?” Eddy: “Err, bad breath, colorful language, feather duster... what do you think they’re gonna be armed with? Guns, you tit!”
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Snatch Plot/ Synopsis Director
Guy Ritchie
Writers
Guy Ritchie
Producers Stars
Matthew Vaughn Jason Flemyng Dexter Fletcher Nick Moran
Music
Editor Release date
directed by Guy Ritchie, featuring an ensemble cast. Set in the London criminal underworld, the film contains two intertwined plots: one dealing with the search for a stolen diamond, the other with a small-time boxing promoter (Jason Statham) who finds himself under the thumb of a ruthless gangster (Alan Ford) who is ready and willing to have his subordinates carry out severe and sadistic acts of violence.
Jason Statham
The film features an assortment of characters, including Irish Traveller
Steven Mackintosh
Mickey O’Neil (Brad Pitt), referred to as a “pikey”, arms-dealer Boris “the
Vinnie Jones
Blade” Yurinov (Rade Šerbedžija), professional thief and gambling addict
David A. Hughes John Murphy
Cinematography
Snatch (stylized as snatch.) is a 2000 British crime comedy film written and
Tim Maurice-Jones Niven Howie 23 August 1998
Franky “Four-Fingers” (Benicio del Toro), American gangster-jeweller Abraham Denovitz known as “Cousin Avi” (Dennis Farina), and bounty hunter Bullet-Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones). It is also distinguished by a kinetic direction and editing style, a circular plot featuring numerous ironic twists of chance and causality, and a fast pace. The film shares themes, ideas and motifs with Ritchie’s first film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It is also filmed in the same visual style and features many of the same actors, including Jones, Statham, and Ford .After stealing an 86-carat (17.2 g) diamond in a heist in Antwerp, Franky “Four-Fingers” goes to London to see diamond dealer Doug “The Head” on behalf of New York jeweler “Cousin Avi”. One of the other robbers advises Franky to obtain a gun from ex-KGB agent Boris “The Blade”. Unbeknown to Franky, Boris and the robber are brothers and plan to steal the diamond from him before he can turn it over to Doug.
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Meanwhile, boxing promoter and slot machine shop owner Turkish persuades gangster “Brick Top” to put boxer “Gorgeous George” in a matchup against one of Brick Top’s boxers. However, when Turkish sends his partner Tommy and Gorgeous George to purchase a caravan from a group of Irish Travelers, George gets into a fight with Mickey O’Neil, a bare-knuckle boxing champion who badly injures George. Turkish persuades Mickey to replace George in his upcoming match by agreeing to purchase a new caravan for Mickey’s mother. Brick Top agrees to the change on the condition that Mickey throws the fight in the fourth round. Boris gives Franky a revolver in exchange for a favour: Franky is to place a bet on Boris’ behalf at Brick Top’s bookies. Avi, knowing Franky has a gambling problem, flies to London with his bodyguard “Rosebud” to claim the diamond personally. Boris hires Vinny and Sol, two small-time crooks, to rob Franky while he is at the bookies. The robbery goes awry and Sol, Vinny, and their driver Tyrone are caught on-camera, but manage to kidnap Franky. Instead of throwing the fight, Mickey knocks his opponent out with a single punch. Infuriated, Brick Top robs Turkish of his savings and demands that Mickey fight again, and lose this time. Meanwhile, Boris retrieves the diamond and murders Franky with a pistol. Brick Top tracks down Sol, Vinny, Tyrone, and their friend, Yardie “Bad Boy” Lincoln and plans on killing them
Doug the Head: “Avi!” Avi: “Shut up and sit down, you big, bald fuck. I don’t like leaving my own country, Doug, and I especially don’t like leaving it for anything less then warm sandy beaches, and cocktails with little straw hats.” Doug the Head: “We’ve got sandy beaches...” Avi: “So? Who the fuck wants to see ‘em? I hope you appreciate the concern I have for my friend Franky, Doug. I’m gonna find him, and you’re gonna help me find him, and we’re gonna start at that fight.”
for robbing his bookies. Sol bargains for their lives by promising Brick Top the stolen diamond, and is given 48 hours to retrieve it. Avi and Doug hire “Bullet-Tooth” Tony to help them find Franky. When the trail leads to Boris, Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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I don’t care if he’s Muhammad “I’m hard” Bruce Lee. You can’t change fighters.
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Franky Four Fingers: “So the Biblical scholars mis-translated the Hebrew word for “young woman” into the Greek word for “virgin,” which was a pretty easy mistake to make, since there is only a subtle difference in the spelling. But back then it was the “virgin” that caught people’s attention. It’s not every day a virgin conceives and bears a son. So you keep that for a couple of hundred years, and the next thing you know, you have the Holy Catholic church.”
they kidnap him and retrieve the diamond, closely pursued by Sol, Vinny, and Tyrone. Coincidentally Turkish and Tommy are driving on the same stretch of road at the time. When Tommy throws Turkish’s carton of milk out of their car window; it splashes over Tony’s windscreen, causing him to crash and killing Rosebud in the process. Boris escapes from the wreck only to be hit by Tyrone’s car. Tony and Avi are confronted by Sol, Vinny, and Tyrone at a pub where Tony realizes that the trio’s pistols are replicas, which he contrasts with his real handgun and intimidates them into leaving. The wounded Boris arrives with an assault rifle with a grenade launcher looking for the diamond back but is shot and killed by Tony, wounding Tyrone at the same time. Sol and Vinny leave a wounded Tyrone and escape with the diamond, which Vinny hides in his pants. When Tony catches up to them, they tell him that the diamond is back at their pawn shop. Once there, they produce the diamond, but it is promptly swallowed by a dog that Vinny got from the travelers. Avi fires at the fleeing dog, accidentally killing Tony. He gives up and returns to New York. Mickey refuses to fight again unless Turkish buys a better caravan for his mother, but Turkish has no money left since Brick Top stole his savings. Furious, Brick Top has his men vandalize Turkish’s gambling arcade and burn down Mickey’s mother’s caravan while she is asleep inside. Mickey agrees to fight to avoid more carnage, but gets so drunk after his mother’s wake that Turkish fears he will not make it to the fourth round. If he fails to go down as agreed, Brick Top’s men will execute Turkish, Tommy, Mickey, and the entire campsite of travelers. Mickey makes it to the fourth round, when he suddenly knocks out his opponent. Outside the arena, Brick Top and his men are killed by the travelers. Mickey has bet on himself to win, and waited until the fourth round to allow the travelers time to ambush and kill Brick Top’s men at the campsite.
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Film Review by Elvis Mitchell Apart from its (barely) double-entente title,
They include Boris the Blade (Rade Sherbedgia),
‘’Snatch’’ qualifies as unusual because it’s a film in
who’s such a legendary figure that he has an
which Brad Pitt’s accent is better than Benicio Del
additional sobriquet, Boris the Bullet Dodger;
Toro’s. This spicy comic strip without an ounce
Cousin Avi (Dennis Farina); Bullet Tooth Tony
of fat is Guy Ritchie’s return to the milieu of his
(Vinnie Jones); and Franky Four Fingers (Mr. Del
debut feature, ‘’Lock, Stock and Two Smoking
Toro). Franky’s hunger for and ineptitude at
Barrels’’: the London streets of guys, guns and
gambling explains his nickname and his injury.
ill-gotten gains. ‘’Snatch’’ seems almost anachronistic now, a relic of a bygone era when the Brits again ruled pop culture, when the music of Oasis was everywhere and ‘’Trainspotting’’ was all the rage. (Ewen Bremner, from that film’s cast, has a brief role in ‘’Snatch.’’)
When you hear names like these, you wonder if Mr. Ritchie picked the pockets of Damon Runyon and Chester Gould got the contents all mixed up and used them anyway. Snatch’’ follows the path of a stolen diamond through the hands, pockets and minds of a group of criminals from all walks
By bringing back actors from ‘’Lock’’ and revisiting
of the lower depths: pawnbrokers, gun brokers
the not-so-mean streets of London, Mr. Ritchie
and jewel merchants.
seems to be stepping backward when he should be moving ahead. He gives this picture a little more emotional weight, but not so much that it gets in the way of its entertaining swagger.
The complicated twist of a plot mainly centers on Turkish (Jason Statham) and his pal, Tommy (Stephen Graham), a pair of small-time hoods and illegal boxing promoters who just want to buy a
This is ‘’The Long Good Friday’’ as conceived for
trailer in a misadventure that inevitably intersects
the men’s magazine Maxim, with a special music
with all of the other nefarious goings-on. At a
remix; the restless soundtrack ranges from the
Gypsy camp, where they go to buy the trailer, they
Massive Attack to Oasis to Maceo and the Macks.
meet Mickey (Mr. Pitt), a hustler whose scams
Mr. Ritchie seizes the bespoke machismo of
drag them into a circle that includes Brick Top
British gangster movies and gives it an action
(Alan Ford), a proudly bloodthirsty thug with a
picture’s ferocity.
menacing expanse of teeth that may be the finest
The effort is hyper-real, and he plays it for comic potential. Everything clicks into place by the end, though, in what is literally a shaggy dog story, with a cast of characters with florid names.
example of dentition in England.
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Mr. Pitt shoplifts the mumbling throwaways that
There’s no getting past Mr. Ritchie’s visual
made Mr. Del Toro’s reputation in ‘’The Usual
trickery. This director uses punchy music-video
Suspects.’’ It’s a self-conscious device, Mr. Pitt’s
techniques as storytelling aids, and they seem
mockery of himself and the responses to his
less compulsively exhibitionist than in his debut
less-than-successful attempt at an Irish brogue
feature. ‘’Snatch’’ includes more entrances than
in ‘’The Devil’s Own.’’ His brio is a reminder of
Joan Crawford made in her entire career.
how adept he is at low comedy; Mr. Pitt has a scene-stealing bit close in style to his turn as a toasted stoner in ‘’True Romance.’’ ‘’Snatch’’ scurries through its paces like a con on the lam, though the film seems less pleased with itself than ‘’Lock’’ and gives the actors a bit more room. This movie toys with cartoon violence and shows its repercussions, as when Tommy finds himself trapped in a nightmare in the Gypsy camp: a tear rolls down this would-be tough guy’s cheek as the Stranglers’ song ‘’Golden Brown’’ plays for counterpoint. And Mickey has the tables
Tommy: “Are you saying I can’t shoot?” Turkish: “No Tommy, I’m not saying you can’t shoot. I know you can’t shoot. I’m saying that sixpound piece of shit stuck in your trousers would do more damage if you fed it to him.”
turned on him in a horrific scene. There are moments when Mr. Ritchie exploits the plot’s comic and dramatic possibilities: for example, any time the magnificently ferocious Mr. Ford surfaces. Actors wait a lifetime to get material this good, and he chomps down hard on it; you can almost see the remains of Brick Top’s foes between his teeth. And Mr. Jones, the soccer player Mr. Ritchie made a star in ‘’Lock,’’ has a fussiness that offsets his gargantuan presence.
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Fun Trivia The word “fuck” is said 163 times. Franky Four-Fingers changes into four different outfits during the short telephone conversation to cousin Avi. Throughout the movie, Turkish (Jason Statham) makes comments to Tommy (Stephen Graham) about his getting a gun for protection from “Ze Germans”. Graham also played Sgt. Myron ‘Mike’
Boris the Blade pulls a large cleaver from his belt. Soap did the same thing in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), another Guy Ritchie movie. Jason Flemyng joked that the working conditions on this film were so terrible that Brad Pitt’s trailer was picketed by Amnesty International as not being fit for someone to live in.
Ranney in the series Band of Brothers (2001),
The producers couldn’t afford enough extras for
although Snatch was released a year prior to the
the boxing match sequences. Whenever a camera
series.
angle changed, the extras had to move around to
Brad Pitt, who was a big fan of Lock, Stock and
create an impression of a crowded house.
Two Smoking Barrels (1998), approached director
When Guy Ritchie told Brad Pitt that he would be
Guy Ritchie and asked for a role in this film. When
playing a boxer, Pitt became concerned because
Ritchie found Pitt couldn’t master a London
he had just finished shooting Fight Club (1999)
accent, he gave him the role of Mickey the Gypsy.
and did not want to play the same type of role
The film’s title only appears once throughout the entire movie, where Vinny (Robbie Gee) tells the
again. Pitt took the role anyway because he wanted to work with Ritchie so badly.
dog, “Don’t Snatch!” as it takes the squeaky toy. It
Lennie James actually hit himself in his private
is said to the dog because it’s the dog who eats
parts with the shotgun while blasting a hole in the
the diamond.
wall at the bookies, but continued the scene. That
During the opening credits, the Hasidic-clad
footage was used in the film.
diamond thieves are discussing the Virgin Mary.
To keep things in order during production,
This is a reference to Reservoir Dogs (1992),
director Guy Ritchie introduced a system of
where during the opening scene the thieves are
fines on set. There were fines for mobile phones
discussing the Madonna song “Like a Virgin”.
ringing, arriving late, taking naps during shooting,
Every mistake that Sol, Vincent and Tyrone make were inspired by various late-night TV shows about real-life crimes gone horribly wrong.
being “cheeky”, being unfunny, and/or moaning and complaining. One staff member was even charged for letting the craft service table run out of coffee cups.
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Revolver Plot/ Synopsis Director
Guy Ritchie
Writers
Guy Ritchie Luc Besson
Producers Stars
share. Jake comes to learn the makings of a perfect con, but never fully
André Benjamin Terence Maynard
Release date
Jake and the other two exchange thoughts on chess and the perfect con via handwritten messages slipped inside of provisional books that the three
Vincent Pastore
Editor
side of him (one a con man, the other a chess master). While in solitary,
Silla
Ray Liotta
Cinematography
years. He has two mysterious characters serving solitary in cells on either
Virginie Beson
Jason Statham
Music
Jake Green (Jason Statham) is in prison in solitary confinement for seven
Andrew Howard Nathaniel Méchaly
grasps its depth and relevancy to him until much, much later. In the course of these exchanges, Jake reveals a lot about himself to the other two. Jake never meets these two men face to face. The two prisoners plan to break out of prison and agree to break Jake out as well. The next day, the two escape, leaving Jake behind. He feels cheated. Jake remains in prison while the two escaped convicts steal all the money Jake had hidden “on the outside”. They trusted Jake with the formula; Jake trusted them as to the whereabouts of his money...a LOT of money. They take the money, leaving in its place, a message on a card: The first rule of any
Tim Maurice-Jones
game, you can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent.
Romesh Aluwihare
Cut to two years later. When Jake gets out of prison, broke and penniless, he starts to practice what he understands of the formula and of the con he
Ian Differ
learned from his time in solitary. Its very successful and he does very well in
James Herbert
world of gambling, he seemingly learned a valuable lesson from the two con
11 September 2005
men inside. Once Jake is up on his feet again (financially speaking), he takes on his nemesis the power hungry Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta).
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Jake enters Macha’s casino with his brothers in tow, and is swiftly summoned before Macha to play a game of chance. En route to Macha’s game, they must take an elevator up 22 floors, where it is revealed Jake suffers from extreme claustrophobia following his years in solitary, and must suppress an anxiety attack to make the journey. At the game, Jake beats him in a game of chance, humiliating Macha. Fearing more of the same, Macha wants revenge and orders a hit on Jake. As Jake and his brothers leave the casino, Jake is approached by a mysterious man (Zach), who offers him assistance and
“The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look.” —Julius Caesar 75 BC
“The only way to get smarter is by playing a smarter opponent.”
hands him a note reading “take the elevator.”
—Fundamentals of Chess 1883
Jake cannot face the return journey and opts to take the stairs, but blacks doctors report he is very ill but do not disclose why he had the blackout.
“First rule of business, protect your investment.”
Macha puts out the order for a hit on Jake, asking professional killer Sorter
—Etiquette of the Banker 1775
out unexpectedly, falls down the stairs and is rushed to the hospital. The
(Mark Strong) to take care of things. Jake arrives home, without Billy, to be welcomed by one of Macha’s hits. Jake is the only one who survives, being rescued by the mysterious Zach. Sorter is confounded by Jake’s escape and survival, unaccustomed to his hits going wrong, which instigates a quiet, intense process of self-questioning in the otherwise passionless killer.
“There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of your enemy.” —Niccolo Machiavelli 1502
Zach takes Jake to his equally mysterious partner, Avi, who produces the results of his hospital tests and informs him that he is in desperate physical trouble from an internal disease, with only three days to live. He tells Jake he and his partner can save him from both Macha and his physical aliment. Guy Ritchie Film Festival 20–23march, 2017 www.schemingscoundrels.info
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Simultaneously, Macha is trying to get into
Jake’s journey climaxes when Avi and Zach, now
business with the infamous, but apparently
his masters, ask Jake to shoot a man that didn’t
invisible Sam Gold. He makes a deal with his
pay a debt. Jake refuses, going against the voice in
female representative Lily Walker (who represents
his head. This is the turning point and just when
the queen on the chess board).
Jake has had enough he forces the two mysterious
Macha is warned if he does not come through on
characters to reveal their game.
the deal that Sam Gold will be very disappointed.
Is he ready for the answer? What is the point of
Macha is after the reward of being in business
putting him through all this pain? Avi and Zach
with Gold (who represents the opponent) and
simply repeat the treasured formula that Jake
foresees no problem.
learned in prison and which the audience is told
The deal is for some white powder, which represents vice of multiple manifestations, in other words, false ways to escape the wrath of Gold or win the game, but perversely these just bring you closer to him.
at the start of the film. The first rule of any game: you can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent.
Jake now realizes that he has fallen victim to
this “perfect con”, that he is actually the pawn in the game, and his opponent (“Sam Gold”), resides inside Jake’s head - “the last place he would ever
Jake agrees to do whatever the two mysterious
look” (another component of the perfect con
characters tell him to do (a gun to the head so to
formula) Sam Gold is a metaphor camouflaged
speak - he has three days to live), there is no time
as fear, ego, evil, the Devil. Now armed with this
to haggle, and he is prepared to do whatever hes
information which has been so elusive, Jake goes
told by these characters. Avi (André Benjamin)
to war with himself. He realizes the game Avi and
and Zach (Vincent Pastore) appear to be loan
Zach have made him play has been to diminish
sharks and gradually force Jake to give away all
the Sam Gold within himself - and that is why he
his money that he made using the con, much to
felt like he was dying, because a part of him was.
his despair. This is so painful that it seems to be killing a part of him, as Avi and Zach force him to do whatever he hates to do. Jake is repeatedly forced into elevators, taking him on a physiological and psychological ride from hell. They also sabotage Macha’s deal with Gold, putting Macha in jeopardy with Gold and forcing Macha to seek the powder from a rival crime boss, Lord Jon (Tom Wu). To make matters worse, they sabotage the deal with Lord Jon to make it appear that each gang is responsible for the treachery. These two gangs begin to destroy one another through their ignorance and greed.
This game it seems is back to front. Jake gives away his remaining money to a charity in Dorothy Macha’s name and Macha takes the credit. At this point we understand that the voice we hear in the film as a voice over is not a voice over at all, it’s the Sam Gold in each of the character’s heads.
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Macha is being fattened up by the voice in his head that encourages Macha to take the credit. To conquer the game that Jake now realizes he is in, he goes to Macha and humiliates himself, begging for forgiveness at the foot of his bed. This goes completely against the voice in Jakes head, which is now in major agony. Leaving Macha’s bedroom, Jake takes an elevator that gets stuck, (his worst nightmare, as he is claustrophobic) but here is where a real battle takes place. Jake induces the pain “Sam Gold” hides behind. Sam Gold tries every technique to control and debilitate Jake, but Jake is now detached enough from the voice to fall for it. “Embrace the pain and you will win this game” -- in doing this, Jake completely sheds himself of Sam Gold. Immediately upon doing so, the elevator starts up. He realizes that though free from the physical prison he knew for seven years, he was still a prisoner - of his own mind. Upon facing and defeating his fear, he is profoundly free. As the elevator doors open, there stands a confused and angry Macha with a gun in his hand. He can’t understand what game Jake is playing, but Jake no longer cares about Macha. Gun or no gun, Jake walks straight past Macha. Because Jake no longer fears him, Macha breaks down. His ego can’t handle this, he falls prey to the voice he hears inside his head, the voice of his own “Sam Gold”. Still unaware of who Sam Gold really is, and where he resides, Macha agonizes over his knowledge that Sam Gold is going to come and get him. What he doesn’t realize is that Sam Gold is already getting him - from the inside.
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Jake makes a large donation of money to a charity
They promised they would break him out of
in Macha’s name, further conquering the Sam
prison and they did, its just Jake didn’t realize
Gold within him, while augmenting the Sam Gold
it was the prison of his mind and how big that
within Macha, who happily takes the credit and
prison was. Avi and Zach confide they did not help
public acclaim. Macha is at first magnanimous
him because they ARE him- they are aspects, or
towards Jake following this gesture, however on
projections, of his own higher self.
learning that Jake had orchestrated the sabotage on the ‘powder’ deals, Macha orders him dead with renewed vigor.
Meanwhile, Jake’s Sam Gold persona grew from Jake’s activities on emerging from prison, fooling his enemies into thinking he was making them
Macha’s men find Jakes brother and niece
rich when instead he was siphoning their money
at his home. While Macha’s henchmen are in
away from them, just as the ego grows rich from
the process of torturing Jake’s brother and
encouraging excess and a sense of entitlement in
threatening his little girl, the previously passive
those within whom it resides.
Sorter concludes his process of self-questioning and steps in, methodically executing all of Macha’s men only to be out gunned in the end by the last surviving member of the gang, who takes Jake’s niece back to Macha.
Macha is convinced Sam Gold is coming to kill him for screwing up the ‘powder’ delivery and the “Sam Gold” within Macha - his ego - whispers “you can’t kill someone who’s already dead.” Ultimately, his pride and fear lead Macha to suicide rather
Jake, now understanding that the mysterious
than kill Jake or his niece. Sam Gold wins. In the
characters Avi and Zach are not who he thought
end it’s a story about realizing that the prison is
they were, finishes a game of chess in Macha’s
the mind and the ego is the hidden master of that
casino with Avi. Here it is revealed that Avi could
environment. The only real enemy to have ever
have beaten him at any time.
existed is within; it is fear. The external world is
Avi tells him one of the rules again, the art is for
Jake Green: “Gradually they thought they’d found a formula to the con. A formula to win the ultimate win.”
determined, to great degree, by ones fear.
the opponent to feed pieces to the victim to make them believe they took those pieces because they are smarter and you are dumber. Jake realizes that these are the two associates from Solitary confinement that he spent seven years living between while in prison.
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Film Review by William Thomas On the face of it – well, if you believe the movie
Problem is, he spectacularly fails to communicate
posters, anyway – Guy Ritchie’s returned to his
exactly what those ideas are. It’s all got something
comfort zone with Revolver, after a disastrous
to do with the con as a game – one that also fol-
sojourn beyond very edge of credibility with
lows the rules of business – and the importance
2002’s Swept Away. Revolver’s populated with the
of knowing who your worst opponent/enemy
same breed of fast-talking, sharp-suited criminal
is. Or understanding that your worst enemy
that entertained so many of us in Lock, Stock and
is actually you. And convincing them/you that
Snatch, the story hinges on gambles and cons and
they’re/you’re not. Or really are. Or something.
the violence is strong and stylish. Plus, of course, Ritchie’s favorite leading man, Jason ‘Transporter’ Statham is back, too, albeit with the kind of hair/’tache combo that makes him look like an extra in a Spaghetti Western.
It kicks off intriguingly enough with no doubt deliberate echoes of The Usual Suspects (via repeated references to a Keyser Soze-esque underworld phantom), introducing us to some fun, skewed characters, like André Benjamin’s
Good news, no? Wellll… The first warning sign
chess-dabbling loan shark and Mark Strong’s
comes with an opening quote from Julius Caesar.
stuttering, balding hitman.
Followed by another from the Fundamentals Of Chess. Then another from a business guide. And then, just for good measure, a final one from Machiavelli. Some of which are repeated later in the movie, just in case you missed them first time around. He’s been doing a lot of reading, that Guy Ritchie. Yup, he’s certainly been filling his head with some very complex ideas, and has admitted even he found it tough to weave them all together and turn them into his Revolver script – a process that took him 18 months.
But it’s not long before an overload of red herrings start stinking up a show already hindered by Statham’s overused voiceover, Ritchie’s tiresomely tricky editing and Ray Liotta’s seeming desire to shout himself to death. By the final act, all pretense at logic is shrugged off, Revolver’s plotline contorting itself into the cinematic equivalent of a scribble on a maze in a child’s puzzle book. You’d do better to skip attempting this conundrum and stick with your Su Doku.
Jake Green: “A part of me dies every time I think about it. These sick bastards are making me pay, pay for my own pain. Why are they dragging this on…Why don’t they just clean me out in one hit,They want me to suffer.”
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Fear is the opponent in life, and as you get smarter so does he. Once it’s recognized for what it is, it can be mastered,but without recognition
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of this situation, you are simply an unconscious slave and the game hasn’t gone full circle.
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Interview with Guy Ritchie Where did the inspiration for Revolver come
Why did you call it Revolver?
from?
I’ve always been surprised that no other movie
It was a culmination of concepts really, but a
has ever been called Revolver because it just
germ got stuck in my mind about one particular
sounds cool. So I like the name but I also like the
concept: the con of all cons. I’m fascinated by how
concept that, if you’re in a game, it keeps revolving
you can trick the mind and the individual, and this
until you realize that you are in a game and then
concept was so audacious, so radical, that I was
maybe you can start evolving. The film is based
attracted to say the least. The formula of the con
on the formula of a game: where does the game
is quite simple – you seduce people by their own
start, where does it stop and who’s conning who.
greed. We can all be conned but at what point do we realize that we’re being conned and to what point do we allow ourselves to be conned. There was a famous book called The Big Con, which works on the formula that it is impossible to con an honest man. I was attracted to that idea too. The great challenge then was to take an intellectual concept and clothe it in an exciting, action-packed narrative because concepts are not necessarily interesting to look at. It’s important that the film delivers on an entertaining level. What you want in the cinema is entertainment but I like to be intellectually titillated while being sensorially stimulated. It took me three years to write this film whereas Snatch took me three months. Fundamentally, it’s not a very complicated film, it’s actually quite simple, but to clothe it within a narrative was quite complicated.
Is it a film with a message? I don’t think there is a message in the movie. The idea is that that there is no such thing as an external enemy. Jake Green is playing against Jake Green. That’s quite a hard concept to get your head around initially of course, if there is only an internal enemy, he wouldn’t want you to get your head around it. So it’s based on the formula that you can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent. Who is the ultimate opponent? Yourself. Then comes the principle that your enemy will always hide in the last place that you would ever look. The last place you would look is inside your head and the last place you would look inside your head is behind fear. I’m not saying that formula’s correct, it’s just a formula and I’m interested in formulas. In this particular instance, the only opponent Jake Green has to challenge is himself by doing exactly what he doesn’t want to do.
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To that extent, are his experiences an allegory for life? It’s funny, I never expected as a writer-director to end up talking about high-falutin’ concepts. I got into filmmaking because I was interested in making entertaining movies, which I felt there was a lack of. Jake Green isn’t just Jake Green. Jake represents all of us. The color green is the central column of the spectrum and the name Jake has all sorts of numerical values. All things come back to him within the film’s world of cons and games. Jake’s on a journey of how to play the game. He’s very good at playing games and he’s done very well out of playing by a certain formula but he didn’t realize how big and consistent that formula is. He only saw the formula in its microscopic form and didn’t realize that it could be macroscopic. Where is the film set? The movie is set in no-man’s land. It’s a kind of transatlantic destination that is really supposed to be illustrative of East meets West somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. In fact, we shot most of it in London and the Isle of Man, which isn’t quite the middle of the Atlantic but it’s going that way. How does he get drawn into the game? One of the first rules of business is to protect your investment. I like the idea that we do the same with our personal philosophies.
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Once we have decided what’s right, irrelevant of whether we are right or wrong, the more energy we will invest to protect that. Which is basically how conmen work. They get you to invest a little bit, then a bit more. They never tell you to buy something, just take a look. Even looking’s an investment. Once you’ve contributed some of your energy to looking - appraising a certain article - then a small investment has been made. From a small investment comes a larger investment, from a larger investment comes a greater investment until eventually you’ve invested so much that you can’t be wrong. Because if you are wrong, it must mean you’re stupid and nobody can admit that they’re stupid. Jake is prompted to invest to counteract the threat of a fatal disease that’s hanging over him. The only way to handle this concept within an hour and 45 minutes of film is to cut to the chase, and there’s nothing quite like death looming on the horizon to precipitate events. Let’s get the party started, and the only way that can happen is the imminent threat of death. If Jake Green represents all of us, what do the other characters represent? The other characters all represent a certain human characteristic. Jake, Avi and Zack represent one characteristic. Then there’s Dorothy Macha, Lily Walker and Lord John, who represent another aspect of our nature, different aspects of vice.
Does that mean Jake, Zack and Avi are on
He’s as real as you believe him to be. In the
the side of good and the others on the side
context of the film, he is the opponent, the force
of evil?
that the individual in the movie has to overcome.
I hesitate to use the words good and evil because
Is Sam Gold evil or is he good? That’s up to the
this is not a story about morals and ethics, this
individual to understand. I love the concept that
is simply a story about the game and there is
if this was all a game, evil may not actually be
no right or wrong. It’s about whether you win
evil. That if there is such a thing as the devil, the
and how quickly you can win. Jake, Zack and Avi
devil’s only job is to be smarter so that we can
represent players who have decided to win in this
become smarter. I have no idea if this holds water
game, and that leads into the slightly more radical
philosophically or theologically, but it’s a very
concept of how to win the game. We’re all players
slick concept. That’s basically what inspired the
within our own little games, so we embody all of
film: that the devil isn’t a bad guy, the devil is just
these characters, we embody all the aspects of
a very clever guy, and the idea that Sam Gold is
vice, we also embody all the aspects of compe-
really just a very smart opponent.
tition, wanting to play the game and succeed in the game. All of the characters represent aspects of ourselves. For example, Sorter represents the aspect of our character in which we have taken a left-turn somewhere and later on decide that the right-turn might have been the better idea. He represents the u-turn within us when we think we’ve gone the wrong way or when we’ve decided to take a different path than the one we’ve been on, which is of course a terribly difficult thing.
How did you create that transatlantic atmosphere? Did you use a lot of special effects? Unlike my previous movies, there’s quite a lot of studio work on this one because of the very nature of the fact that I wanted an environment that’s transcontinental. Because of that we had to revert to green screen. I don’t care whether I use special effects or not. My principal job is to make interesting and entertaining films, and I’m
And who is Sam Gold?
not proud of which format or which particular
I like the idea that Sam Gold is a collective
technique I use. I just wanted the film to look
hallucination. He doesn’t really exist but he does
good and that was about the only request I had of
exist. He has no power of his own, he only has the
my DP. We wanted it to be slightly over the top in
power that you give him.
terms of photography.
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What I liked about American movies when I was
I like him and because I like him, it’s much easier
a kid was that they’re sort of larger than life and I
to work with him. He’s a very capable actor and
think I’m still suffering from that reaction. Tim, the
he embodies what I want to see when I go to
DP, was completely unbridled by me. The cheekier
the cinema. I’ve been a big fan of Ray Liotta’s for
he got, the more I applauded him. He’s his own
a long time and been desperate to use him in
boss in that department.
something. He wasn’t very keen about being put
So you don’t fit the stereotype of the dictatorial filmmaker?
into spandex pants but once he got into the spirit of things it was hard to get him out of them.
If somebody has a better idea than me, I’ll take it
What freedom do you give the actors to
if it surpasses what we have on the page because
improvise?
at the end of the day, it’s me that takes the credit
I like to think that we’ve got a plan, so let’s stick
anyway! I’ve been working with lots of these guys
to it. That said, once we’ve stuck to it, we’re
for ten years now and I’ve become very aware of
allowed as much improvisation as anyone cares
how much the team has to do with the creative
to indulge themselves in. You’d be surprised
process. I’m not under too much of an illusion of
how little indulging one wants to undertake once
how smart or un-smart I am because filmmaking
you’ve stuck to the plan. We always have a take
ultimately is about teamwork. I enjoy the process
that’s “one for fun”, so once you’ve got what you
and I’ve usually done quite a lot of preparation
need, you can do what you like. Something does
before I arrive on set so I’m not a touchy film-
occasionally pop out of that tree.
maker and I’m not an anxiety-ridden filmmaker, at least while I’m shooting the film. If you enjoy things, it tends to quell your negative traits.
Does chance exist? I don’t believe chance exists, no. I don’t know whether it does but personally I don’t believe in
So you don’t fit the stereotype of the
it. Either there’s order in the universe or there’s
dictatorial filmmaker?
chaos. Either everything is predetermined or, by
Apart from the fact that I don’t like him, don’t
the definition of free choice, you can determine it
trust him and have no respect for him as a chess
but there’s still no element of chance.
player, Jason and I work quite well together. Actually, Jason forced me into using him. He threatened me with violence. The rest of the cast I have more affection for. André was a pleasure to work with. In fact, 95% of the people in my films have been nothing less than a pleasure to work with. That goes for Jason, too.
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Or there’s the other way of thinking, that it’s all
Is there any limit to how violent a
chaos and there’s absolutely no order and it’s all
scene can be?
chance. You either subscribe to one or the other. I
I think there’s a natural system in your own head
subscribe to the idea that there is order although
about how much violence the scene warrants.
it may look like total chaos, but I’ve no idea if I’m
It’s not an intellectual process, it’s an instinctive
right. In the film, Jake’s niece is a good example.
process. I like to think it’s not violence for the
She represents innocence and I liked the idea that
sake of violence and in this particular film, it’s
she could ride a roller-coaster that’s collapsing
actually violence for the annihilation of violence.
all around but still land on a bed of cotton wool
It’s about not letting the internal enemy, the real
against all the odds because innocence protects
enemy, have his way because the more he does
her. There are infinite examples, of course, where
the stronger he becomes. The film’s about the
innocence is not nurtured or cared for, but it all
devastating results that can manifest from the
comes back to chance.
internal enemy being unbridled and allowed to
What’s the role of violence in your films?
unleash chaos.
My approach to violence is that if it’s pertinent,
As a writer-director, which aspect of film-
if that’s the kind of movie you’re making, then it
making do you enjoy most?
has a purpose. There’s quite a lot of violence in
You get a different kick out of all aspects of film-
this film but I like to think that it serves the story,
making. I suppose directing on set is the most fun
that it illustrates the point we’re trying to convey.
because it’s a good crack and you feel you’re on
Jason doesn’t take his shirt off and beat anyone
the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary
up, which would seem to be the kind of thing that
undertaking. It’s not easy to strap yourself down
Jason would do as he’s quite good at it, because
to a desk and bash on a keyboard when you know
it didn’t seem to serve his character and the
you can direct lots of films, because directing films
narrative. I quite like the idea of Jason keeping his
is fun and interactive and gregarious. Writing isn’t.
shirt on anyway.
It’s very solitary and you need to exercise a great
Does Jason still do all his own stunts? Jason’s game to do all his own stunts. I wouldn’t allow him to because if he broke his leg or something I’d be screwed for eight weeks. He’s as
deal of discipline to do it. I think it’s in the exercise of disciplining yourself to do it that the most profit lies. I love dialogue and I suppose writing dialogue is certainly the most fun.
game as a train to throw himself down flights of
Of the various formulas that make up the
stairs. I am not so enthusiastic, so I threw other
rules of the game, do you have a favorite?
people down the stairs.
My favorite line is, “You can only get smarter by playing a smarter opponent.” My next one would be, “The greatest enemy will hide in the last place you would ever look.” The third one would be, “The harder the battle, the sweeter the victory.
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Besides Jake’s name, there is an abundance
It just seemed like the perfect environment
of symbols in the film. What purpose do they
in which to meet your demon. A number that
serve?
doesn’t exist that is also the number of liberation.
I think it’s fun that films have depth. I’ve left a
That scene is one of the most impressive in the
whole snail trail of clues and symbols for those
whole movie. It’s my favorite scene in the film
who care to indulge themselves. But is it integral
and I actually shot it three times. It initially had
to your enjoyment of the film? I think not. There
four lines written for it. When we got in there, we
are simply different levels that the film tries to
spent two hours messing around, trying to draw
serve. Chess is a prime example…
as much as I could out of Jason. I realized we’d got
The rules in chess are consistent with the rules of all cons. I like the idea that the characters could all be different pieces on a chess board. I think
into something that was very interesting and in the end I could probably have filmed 45 minutes of him screaming at himself in there.
we all embody the attributes of pawns, bishops,
The film opens with Jake Green getting out
knights and castles, kings and queens. It’s just a
of jail. Would you say that it ends with him
question of do we decide to be a pawn or do we
enjoying another kind of liberation?
decide to be a queen. I didn’t choose to be the
The film starts off with a jailbreak and ends with
latter particularly but there are different aspects
a jailbreak because all the skulduggery going on
to our personality and nature that the chess
inside his head didn’t allow him to know he was
board represents, which is maybe why chess
still incarcerated. That’s what the film is about,
is such a popular and ancient game. I’m a very
the ultimate jailbreak and the radical actions
bad chess player, by the way. Jason Statham has
one needs to undertake to liberate oneself from
probably been blowing his own trumpet about
this jail. It tells the story of the skulduggery and
what a qualified chess player he is. In fact, he’s an
trickery and head-trickery that accompanies Jake
appalling chess player.
on his journey, and the seemingly unlikely actions
And the fact that the face-off between Jake
our hero has to undertake to break out of his jail.
and himself, his internal enemy, takes place on the 13th floor? The elevator starts at 32 and stops between 14 and 12. In America, buildings still don’t have a 13th floor. 13’s a curious number. Quite how it got its unpopular reputation is a mystery and one I would quite like to have solved. Mythologically, it’s the luckiest number, it’s the number of liberation. From a point of view of Jake’s incarceration, what better place to liberate yourself than floor 13, which doesn’t even exist in an elevator.
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RocknRolla Plot/ Synopsis Director
Guy Ritchie
Writers
Guy Ritchie
Producers
Stars
wealthy Russian property dealer by the name of Yuri Omovich (Roden) looks to Lenny for help on a major new deal, Lenny is eager to assist (for a very
Guy Ritchie
large fee, of course). Yuri agrees to pay, and as a show of faith, he insists
Joel Silver
that Lenny borrow his “lucky” painting. Yuri then asks his accountant, Stella
Gerard Butler
Mark Strong Idris Elba Tom Hardy
Editor Release date
(Strong) his second in command who serves as the film’s narrator. When a
Steve Clark-Hall
Thandie Newton
Cinematography
underworld and real estate market. We learn all about Lenny from Archy
Susan Downey
Tom Wilkinson
Music
Lenny Cole (Wilkinson) is a crime boss who calls the shots in London’s
(Newton), to transfer the money to Lenny, but Stella arrangers for a band of thieves known as the The Wild Bunch consisting of One Two (Butler) and Mumbles (Elba) to intercept the money before it reaches him and split the cash among the three of them. To make matters worse, the lucky painting has mysteriously been stolen, and the number one suspect is Lenny’s estranged stepson, crack-addicted rock star Johnny Quid, who is presumed dead. As Lenny desperately tries to locate the painting, Yuri calls in sadistic
Steve Isles
henchmen to recover his money.
David Higgs
In an attempt to find Johnny, Lenny and Archy enlist his former record
James Herbert 4 September 2008
producers Mickey (Ludacris) and Roman (Piven) to track him down or else their concerts and clubs will be shut down. Meanwhile, Handsome Bob (Hardy) is distraught on the night before his court case, he’s scheduled to do a five year prison stretch. One Two organizes a party for Bob. On the way to the party, One Two tries to cheer Bob up to no avail. Bob then comes out to One Two, admitting to having a crush on One Two.
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One Two is disgusted, but thinking that it’s Bob’s last night as a free man, asks him what exactly he’d like to do. The next day, One Two refuses to attend Bob’s court hearing to the surprise of Mumbles. One Two uncomfortably tries to explain that something happened between him and Bob the previous night, when Mumbles tells him that everyone knows that Bob is gay. When One Two, Mumbles, and Bob try to steal a second load of Yuri’s money they are wounded and chased by Yuri’s persistent hired mercenaries who engage them in a shootout and a lengthy foot chase. They nevertheless deliver the money to Stella as they did before. By this time Yuri has grown impatient and come to suspect that Lenny is involved in the theft of the cash and his painting. Yuri has Lenny viciously beaten, demanding that the painting be returned and the money delivered. Two item peddling junkies manage to steal the painting from Johnny and sell it to the Wild Bunch, and One Two promptly gives it to Stella after they have sex. Mickey and Roman find Johnny and call Archy to have him delivered. After capturing the three,
Archie: “People ask the question... what’s a RocknRolla? And I tell ‘em - it’s not about drums, drugs, and hospital drips, oh no. There’s more there than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life - some the money, some the drugs, others the sex game, the glamour, or the fame. But a RocknRolla, oh, he’s different. Why? Because a real RocknRolla wants the fucking lot.”
Archy and Lenny’s men go to apprehend One Two who is already in the hands of Yuri’s vengeful mercenaries. Archy and his men kill the mercenaries and kidnap One Two as well as Mumbles and Handsome Bob who arrived to deliver the name of a much talked about police informant inside the London underworld. Yuri arrives at Stella’s house to seal their arrangements while also asking her to marry him, as he has been smitten with her Immediately after asking, Yuri spots his lucky painting in Stella’s living room. a long time.
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After being asked how long she’s had it, Stella says she’s had it for years, not knowing it’s actually Yuri’s. Feeling betrayed and enraged, Yuri orders his associate inside to kill Stella. Meanwhile, Archy brings Johnny, the Wild Bunch, Mickey, and Roman to Lenny’s warehouse where Johnny begins to verbally provoke Lenny. Lenny then shoots Johnny in the stomach before he finishes telling Archy that Lenny is the famous rat. Lenny then orders Johnny, Roman, and Mickey escorted downstairs while demanding that the Wild Bunch to tell him where the money is. Handsome Bob offers Archy the documents in his jacket pocket which reveals the informant, code named “Sidney Shaw,” to be Lenny. Lenny had arranged with the police to give up many of his associates for prison at any given time in exchange for his freedom. One Two, Mumbles, and Archy himself are among the people Lenny has ratted out over the years, and Archy had served over four years in jail because of this. With this new information brought to light, Archy frees the Wild Bunch and kills Lenny. In the meantime, Johnny, Mickey, Roman and two of Lenny’s men are in an elevator on their way to a spot where Lenny’s gangsters will execute them and dispose of their bodies. Johnny informs Mickey and Roman in detail about how they will be killed along with him. This prompts Lenny’s men to act prematurely, but thanks to Johnny’s warning Mickey and Roman react in time, and after a struggle manage to kill the gangsters. When they make it to the ground floor, Johnny kills two more guards waiting outside the lift. The Wild Bunch save them from the last remaining henchman (One-Two knocks him out from behind) and they all escape. Some time later, Archy picks up a rehabilitated but still eccentric Johnny Quid from the hospital.
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Archy offers Yuri’s lucky painting to Johnny as a peace offering and “welcome home present,” which Johnny accepts. Archy reveals to Johnny that obtaining the painting “cost a very wealthy Russian an arm and a leg.” The film closes with Johnny proclaiming that with his new freedom, he will do what he couldn’t do before: “become a real RocknRolla”. During the end credits, it is revealed that One Two and Bob had danced together on the night before Bob’s court hearing.
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Junkies, as any junkie will tell you, are not to be trusted. They take what doesn’t belong to them, not because they’re thinking, but because they’re junkies.
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Review by Roger Ebert I’m looking at “RocknRolla” and I’m thinking, why make a movie about stealing a parcel of London real estate, when you could make a movie about stealing a trillion bucks of real estate? British gangsters may dress better than Wall Street overlords and be more colorful, but they just don’t think big. After watching Richard S. Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, squirm before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (HOGREFORM) as he explained why he deserved $350 million for guiding his company into bankruptcy, I found it refreshing to watch hoodlums squirm because they might get personally kneecapped without even so much as a golden hang-glider. Guy Ritchie’s latest movie is about some very hard cases from the London and Russian underworlds who are all trying to cheat on one another, and about an accountant who the term femme fatale has been hanging around waiting to describe. It’s one of those rare circular con jobs where you can more or less figure out what’s going on, and you can more or less understand why nobody else does, although at various times, they all think they do, and at other times, you’re wrong.
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Johnny Quid: “Did he ever interfere with you? You know, touch you inappropriately?” Pete: “He tickled me, if that’s what you mean.” Johnny Quid: “You see in psychological circles there’s a technical term for that scenario.” Pete: “There is?” Johnny Quid: “Monsteroustickalotis.”
While they engage in these miscalculations, they
She hires One Two and Mumbles to steal Cole’s
act terrifically dangerous to one another -- so
$7 million, which she doesn’t know was briefly
smoothly you’d swear they were in the second
their $7 million, from which they can pay $2
year of a repertory tour.
million to Cole and he won’t kill them, but they
You know who Tom Wilkinson is. You may not recognize him here, for reasons I won’t describe because then you would. He’s funny and terrifically dangerous as Lenny Cole, a gangster with the memory of a tax collector. He owns or has leveraged great swaths of London, including one swath urgently required by a Russian gangster
lose the money and Cole doesn’t have the $7 million to pay Uri, and meanwhile, the invaluable “Good Luck” painting has been stolen, so at this point I’m not sure who has the money, maybe the femme fatale, but Cole needs it to give Uri, and Uri desperately needs it for harrowing reasons of his own, councilman needs it to save his career.
named Uri Obamavich (Karel Roden), who comes
Uri may not give a damn about his priceless
to Cole. Now follow this attentively. One Two
painting but Cole doesn’t know that, and he sends
(Gerard Butler), Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy) and
Archy (Mark Strong) and Mickey (Chris “Ludacris”
Mumbles (Idris Elba), whose parents may have
Bridges) to find out who stole the painting, and
been Dick Tracy fans, borrow $7 million from Cole
ohmigod! it’s in the hands of Cole’s own stepson,
to buy some land.
the druggie rocknrolla Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell),
Cole secretly owns the land and won’t sell it to them, and arranges to steal the money back and demands to be paid. So he has the money and still has his land. Ken Lay would be proud. But that’s the simple part. Now Uri pays Cole $7 million to put the fix in on his own swath deal through Cole’s tame London councilman, offering Cole his “good luck painting” as security. The femme fatale (Thandie Newton), Uri’s accountant,
and Cole discovers that if there’s anyone harder to deal with than a Russian mafioso, it’s a druggie rocknrolla stepson. The bottom line is, all these people chase the same money around with the success of doggie tail-biting, and it’s a lot of fun, and it’s not often in these con films that everybody is conning everybody, and they’re all scared to death, and nobody knows which cup the pea is under.
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“RocknRolla” (which is how they say “rock and roller” in the East End) isn’t as jammed with visual pyrotechnics as Ritchie’s “Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrel” but that’s OK, because with anything more happening, the movie could induce motion sickness. It never slows down enough to be really good, and never speeds up enough to be the Bourne Mortgage Crisis, but there’s one thing for sure: British actors love playing gangsters as much as American actors love playing cowboys, and it’s always nice to see people having fun.
One Two: “Bob, I know all your girlfriends, all of them.” Handsome Bob: “I told you, you wouldn’t understand!” One Two: “What, I wouldn’t understand that you’re a fucking homo? You’re Handsome Bob! You’re Handsome Bob, the fucking lady-killer, that’s who you are! Do you hear me, Bob? I mean, I’ve had showers with you, man. You’ve seen my fucking cock!”
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Fun Trivia On the day of filming the sex scene, Gerard
The character Uri appears to be inspired by real-
Butler had a nasty throat infection and Thandie
life Russian businessman Roman Abramovich. He
Newton refused to kiss him. Guy Ritchie then
physically resembles Abramovich and conducts
improvised and revised the scene into the very
a business meeting at a soccer stadium which
funny montage.
echoes Abramovich’s status as owner of Chelsea
According to director Guy Ritchie, this is the first
Football Club
in a trilogy. Before the credits, there is a title card
The movie makes recurring use of the Black
that reads “The Wild Bunch will return in The Real
Strobe song “I’m a Man” in the soundtrack. Black
RockNRolla”, hinting that this will be the title of the
Strobe became famous in the 1990s for their
next installment.
song “Me and Madonna”, referring to the famous
Christopher Nolan said that it was his perfor-
singer, Guy Ritchie’s former wife.
mance in this film that convinced him to cast Tom
The band playing in the club scene are The
Hardy in Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight
Subways with their song “Rock and Roll Queen”.
Rises (2012). There are two characters whose names are a reference to characters in other movies. The character Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy) is a possible reference to Jason Statham who played Handsome Rob in The Italian Job (2003), and the character Fred the Head is similar to Doug the Head in Ritchie’s previous film Snatch (2000).
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The Man From U.N.C.L.E Plot/ Synopsis Director
Guy Ritchie
Writers
Guy Ritchie Lionel Wigram
Producers
Cinematography
discover is Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). Solo goes to a chop shop garage where he meets Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander). Gaby’s father is being forced to build an atom bomb for the Nazis. Solo’s mission is to get her out of Berlin
John Davis
so they can find her uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth) and have him set up a
Lionel Wigram
meeting between her and her dad. As they make their way to the border they’re chased by Kuryakin, who turns
Henry Cavill
out to be Solo’s match. However, Solo has help. Waiting on the other side of
Armie Hammer
the wall is a CIA truck that shoots a zip line up to the roof where Solo and
Alicia Vikander
Gaby end up. They’re able to zip line over the Berlin wall. Kuryakin is right
Elizabeth Debicki
behind them but the truck backs up making slack in the line and leaving Illya
Luca Calvani
on the other side of the wall.
Hugh Grant Music
from West to East Berlin, but notices he’s being followed by a man we’ll later
Steve Clark-Hall
Guy Ritchie Stars
Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) makes his way through checkpoint Charlie
Daniel Pemberton John Mathieson
Editor
James Herbert
Release date
2 August 2015
There is a flashback to Kuryakin’s briefing on Solo. Solo came to Europe during the second world war but stayed there and became a master art thief. He was eventually captured but the CIA felt his skills were too good to be wasted in a prison, so they recruited him. In the present, CIA specialist Sanders (Jared Harris) meets with Solo at a park. In the restroom he lays out the mission. While at the urinal he says, “What I’m going to feed you might be bitter.” It’s innuendo, but nevertheless, it’s true. It’s Illya Kuryakin! They fight and Kuryakin overcomes Solo.
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The KGB director Oleg (Misha Kuznetsov) comes in and tells Kury, “Don’t kill your partner on your first day.” Solo asks what that means. Sanders translates. Solo says he understands the words, but what does that mean. The CIA and KGB have struck a deal and are sending Solo and Kury on a joint mission. They have to go to Rome where Kury will pose as Gaby’s fiancé and Solo as an antiquities dealer. They believe a family business there that Gaby’s uncle Rudi works for is a front. The business has been in Alexander’s (Luca Calvani) family but actually his wife Victoria (Elizabeth Debicki) is the brains behind the operation. Kury and Solo get to know each other by revealing what they’ve discovered in each others files. Solo triggers Kury’s rage issues, but the Russian manages to keep them in check. Meanwhile, a man named Waverly (Hugh Grant) checks into the hotel in Rome right before Napoleon does. When Napoleon checks in, he notices a couple of guys who are clearly evil henchmen in the lobby. He has his bags brought to his room but he takes off.
Napoleon Solo: [Contacting Victoria’s boat via radio] “Diadema, this is Napoleon Solo. Hello Victoria. I suspect that you’re already listening, so I’ll give you this message directly: earlier today, I killed your husband. I’d like to report that he died honorably, courageously, and selflessly... but he didn’t. Instead it was a rather pitiful affair involving tears, begging, and offers to trade anything - and indeed anyone - so I would spare his life.”
On the streets of Rome Kury and Gaby bond a little. Solo shows up and tells Kury that he’s going to get mugged. To convince the bad guys that he’s really a Russian architect, his cover, and not a super bad-ass secret agent, his instructions are to “be a pussy”; just get mugged and don’t fight back.
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The mugging happens and even though the thugs take Kury’s father’s watch and Gaby’s engagement ring he manages to suppress his rage and submit. Solo pops up and they all go back to the hotel. Solo and the hotel desk clerk drink champagne and wind up in bed. Meanwhile, in the “engaged couple” room, Gaby chugs vodka and tries to get Kury to dance with her. He won’t so she slaps him and they start wrestling. She passes out and he tucks her into bed. In the morning Solo discovers about a dozen monitoring bugs in his room. He goes to Kury’s room and hands them to him telling him that they’re Russian-made. Kury hands Solo about a dozen bugs too and says that they’re American-made. Kury meets Gaby in front of the hotel and gives her a brand new engagement ring. Solo heads to a party that Victoria is throwing. On the way in he literally bumps into Waverly. We later find out that he picks Waverly’s pocket and steals his invitation. Solo crashes the party and gets in a fight with security because he doesn’t present an invitation. Victoria takes notice and Solo shows his invitation. He manages to “lift” her necklace and another woman’s bracelet. Victoria asks how he got an invitation and who he is. He says his name is Deveny and that he specializes in filling the gaps in people’s collections. He gives her the bracelet and the necklace. Gaby and Kury are also at the party. Rudi disses Kury by wondering if Gaby is slumming it like “a racehorse with a work horse”. Kury goes into a bathroom but three young Italian aristocrats prevent from using the sink and tell him to use the ladies’ washroom instead. He finally gives in to his anger and roughs them up. Alexander takes a keen liking to Gaby right away. Back at the hotel Kury has locked himself in the bathroom which he has turned into a dark room and is developing film. His camera was able to pick up on radiation on clothing at the party.
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Therefore, Gaby’s father must be near and working on that atom bomb. Both Solo and Kury say that they’ll sleep on this new information, but .... in the next shot they both break into the company’s factory in the middle of the night. While Kury is clearly the muscles between the two of them, Solo is more cunning and manages to break into a large bank-style safe. It’s empty except for a centrifuge used for enhancing uranium. Solo thought that model of safe didn’t have an alarm. Wrong! They escape by jumping out of a window and onto a boat. Solo falls off and swims to a dock where he finds a truck. Inside is the driver’s dinner which he casually eats while Kury gets chased in circles by guards on a well-armed boat. They blow up Kury’s boat. Solo drives away but has second thoughts. He returns, crashes his truck onto the bad guys’ boat, and then rescues a drowning Kury. Victoria sees that the safe has been opened and calls Solo’s hotel room. No answer. Rudi calls Gaby and asks to apologize to Kury, but she says he’s asleep. She then calls room 304 to tell the person on the other end that the meeting is confirmed. Victoria and her goons race to the hotel, but Solo and Kury get there first. She and Solo get it on in his room (807). The next morning, Kury awkwardly turns on a tracker that’s on Gaby’s garter belt. (Lots of sexual tension there). Gaby meets with her uncle and says that she knows her father is there and that he works for him. Rudi asks how she knows. We don’t hear her answer just yet. Instead, we see Kury, who’s monitoring from afar, start running. Solo meets with Victoria. He pours himself a drink, but she’s drugged it. He wakes up strapped to an electric torture chair. Rudi is an evil Nazi scientist who keeps a scrapbook of all the horrific stuff he’s done. He has a blank page just waiting for Solo. Fortunately, there’s a short in the electric chair. Kury rescues Solo and straps Rudi into the chair.
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He tells them that the warhead is already built. Kury and Solo step out of the room to debate what to do with Rudi. In the background, the short in the electric chair fixes itself and Rudi gets electrocuted to the point of bursting in flames. Gaby is brought to an island where her dad is working. She slaps him and tells him to finish the job. Alexander and Victoria seem happy with this. Meanwhile, Waverly (who turns out to be a member of the British Intelligence) informs Solo and Kury about the situation. The Brits knew that it was only a matter of time before someone grabbed Gaby to try to get her dad to finish the atom bomb. They assumed it would be the Nazis. They were surprised that it was the Russians and the Americans. So Gaby has been working undercover with the British this whole time. She gains the trust of the bad guys by telling them that Kury and Solo are secret agents. She knew that her new engagement ring would have a bug in it and that Kury would be listening. Solo says that he thinks the British were working with her, but now that they’ve lost her, they need the American and the Russians help. Kury and Solo are both told by their respective superiors to get the warhead and the disc with professor Teller’s research. Also, to kill the other if necessary. On the island, Gaby and her dad try to switch lenses on the warhead but Victoria notices. There is also a second warhead. She orders Gaby be put in a cell and tells her father to finish, with the threat of her death. He does, but Victoria takes his disc and the backup he had hidden, then shoots him. Time for a super-stylized and ultra-cool breaking-in montage as Solo and Kury storm the island. During it, Solo finds Kury’s father’s watch on a guard and grabs it. They find that Gaby and the warhead on the far side of the island in a jeep being driven by Alexander. Solo chases in a dune buggy while Kury is on a motorcycle. The vehicles all crash. Alexander and Kury fight and Kury stabs him in the head with his knife. Turns out though, this is the wrong bomb! Victoria disappeared with the right one.
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Solo remembers that Alexander’s family used a fishing boat to smuggle gold for the Nazis. He also remembers the name of the boat from an old childhood photo of Alexander. They radio the boat and Solo taunts Victoria about the way her husband died. They stay on the radio long enough for the good guys to track the boat. Turns out that the two lenses that were in the bombs make it so that one bomb can take out the other. They launch the decoy bomb and blow up Victoria, the Atom bomb and the fishing boat. Gaby apologizes to Kury and returns the engagement ring. He tells her to keep it so that he can know if she ever needs him. Kury’s boss tells him that the professor’s disc wasn’t destroyed but that Solo has it. Kury goes to his room. Solo pours drinks for the two of them. Kury sees the disc and is filling with rage. Solo gives him the watch and reveals the disc. They both decide to destroy it. Waverly and Gaby show up. Waverly says that he’s decided to keep the group together and that they have a new code-name: UNCLE. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement). Over the end credits we see everyone’s dossiers. In one little detail, Gaby is currently learning to speak Russian.
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I’ve been briefed on you. Your balls are on a very long leash, held by a very short man.
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Review by David Edelstein The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is a naked attempt to
It takes its tone from its protagonist, Henry Cavill’s
assemble another studio “franchise” (my least
Napoleon Solo, a former master-thief blackmailed
favorite word, except when applied to 7-Eleven
by the CIA (represented by a nasty-raspy Jared
stores and Sunoco stations) from a good (at its
Harris) into becoming a secret agent. Cavill wears
best) but irrelevant half-century-old TV espionage
the best-fitting suits I’ve ever seen, all in shades
show, starring two barely distinguishable
of blue that bring out the radiance in his jet-black
hunks-of-the-moment and directed by the guy
hair. The dimple in his chin might have been
behind the coarse, whoosh-y Sherlock Holmes–
added by an artist. A Brit playing an American,
as-action-hero “franchise” fashioned for the newly
Cavill delivers his smart-aleck lines in a resonant
charmless Little King, Robert Downey Jr. Though I
purr that is too musical to be coming from a Yank
strive to set aside all prejudices when the lights go
but perfectly abets this conception of Solo. He
down, I had a hunch that The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
makes you think of the old-style Bond — and is
would be excruciating.
plainly meant to.
Well, it turns out to be absolutely delightful.
The movie’s mismatched-buddy gimmick is that
Which proves again the folly of making up one’s
here, at the height of the Cold War (a gorgeous,
mind about what one hasn’t seen. It must be
post–World War II Soviet vs. U.S. montage is the
said that the whoosh-meister, Guy Ritchie, is
backdrop for the credit sequence), Solo is forced
not working in his usual key. Setting his film in a
to work with a former antagonist, KGB agent Illya
snazzy early ‘60s, he has decided that style will be
Kuryakin, to fight a soon-to-be nuclear-armed
substance and has the stylishness to pull it off.
criminal organization led by the tall, poised fox
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is not another jittery,
from The Great Gatsby, Elizabeth Debicki, this
rattle-you-into-submission post-Bourne thriller.
time insouciantly sinister. (She has snared a
It’s not even, truth be told, especially thrilling. It’s
former Nazi nuke genius named — cheekily —
something more rare these days. It’s breezy and
Teller.) This is not the enigmatic Kuryakin of TV’s
elegant — so breezily elegant it can make you
golden-haired David McCallum.
laugh out loud from frame to frame.
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Armie Hammer’s Ilya is a softhearted if border-
In part because Ritchie (who co-wrote the
line-psychotic beast, an indefatigable terminator
screenplay with Lionel Wigram) doesn’t use
who has, like Solo, been blackmailed by his state.
revenge to fuel the plot. (Think how much more
(His father languishes in the Gulag.) Physically,
aimless Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation
Hammer bears too much resemblance to Cavill,
would be if it didn’t begin with the villain putting
and I wish they’d lightened his hair to make him
a bullet at point-blank range into the head of a
more distinctive. (He’d have looked great with the
pretty, enthusiastic young agent in front of the
plutonium hues of Robert Shaw in From Russia
helpless Tom Cruise.) The lone character who
With Love.) But he’s a good comic actor with
loses someone close is surprisingly blasé about it.
bullying force — his hard stare fractures Cavill’s twinkle into wobbly particles.
The emotion here comes from Ritchie’s evident love of choreographing things just so, which
Much excellent comic fodder comes from Solo
is retro in the best way. In an early car chase,
and Kuryakin’s compulsion to one-up each other
two vehicles swerve and merge and move apart
— in every way except, oddly, over the Girl, Gaby
with dazzling symmetry. In another, the shots
Teller, played by that lissome, versatile Swedish
are held extra-long so the camera can pivot to
ex-ballerina Alicia Vikander, who brings a touch
show the spatial relationships between hurtling
of Audrey Hepburn impudence to the part. No
objects. Two of the most hilarious scenes show
rivalry here: Babe-magnet Solo gets to bed the
tumultuous happenings in the background —
dishy hotel clerk and the villainess while Kuryakin
noiselessly, behind glass — while characters in
makes time in his clumsy fashion with Gaby, who
the foreground are either serenely indifferent or
has joined the pair in an effort to contact her
oblivious. On a couple of occasions, Ritchie splits
kidnapped father. The two have a kinky-weird
the screen, seemingly just for the fun of it. And
scene in which they beat each other up and fall
he lingers happily on the high-tech trappings of a
into a quasi-clinch — at which point she conks out
different age, now absurdly low-tech.
in bed. The emotional stakes don’t seem very high in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
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This is the sort of movie where the cinematographer (John Mathieson), editor (James Herbert), and production (Oliver Scholl) and costume (Joanna Johnston) designers deserve their own curtain calls. I don’t want to oversell The Man From U.N.C.L.E. It’s still a formulaic “origin story” with a plug for the “franchise” to come before the closing credits. But artifice this witty can give you a lot of pleasure. One aspect of the movie’s unreality is unexpectedly fun. Apart from Hugh Grant as Waverly, the lead actors use accents not their own: Brits Cavill and Harris play American, American Armie Hammer plays a Russian, and Swede Vikander and Aussie Debicki speak with from-nowhere “European” cadences. Rarely does absolute inauthenticity come across as so superbly stylized.
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A GUY RITCHIE FILM FESTIVAL
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Attraction & Accommodation Places to Visit The Chelsea Museum/Tour
Cineworld Fulham Road
Stamford Bridge , Fulham Road, Fulham,
Fulham Road, London.
London SW6. Brompton Cemetery Fulham Road, Fulham, London SW10. Square One Gallery 592 Kings Road, SW6. Earls Court Exhibition Centre Warwick Rd, Kensington, London SW5 9TA. The Troubadour 263-267 Old Brompton Rd, Earls Court, London SW5 9JA. Campdon Hill Docking Station, Kensington 263-267 Old Brompton Rd, Earls Court, London SW5 9JA. Virgin Active Fulham Pools The Norman Arms, 197 Lillie Rd, London SW6 7ST.
King’s Rd Sloane Square, London. Eel Brook Common Park Kings Road, SW6 2TJ. The Sweatshop 2-8 Dawes Road, Fulham, London. Buckingham Palace London SW1A 1AA. Piccadilly Circus Piccadilly Circus, London W1D 7ET. Hyde Park London W2 2UH. Camden Town Camden Town, Greater London.