RocknRolla: Review By B. Alan Orange

People keep wanting to call RocknRolla a return to form for Guy Ritchie. Not true. His form has remained unchanged through such films as the Madonna-powered Swept Away and the Kabala mind melting mess Revolver. His handcrafted aesthetic has gone untouched throughout both of those former proceedings, and they look just as much like a branded Guy Ritchie movie as anything else. What RocknRolla is, actually, is a return to genre for Guy. And it acts as a sort of weeping end to his Guns and Gangsters trilogy that started up with Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and peeked with Snatch. Try as it might, RocknRolla never lives up to the vivacious, sweeping nature of his opening oeuvre. And its shocktart taste is so “been there, done that” unnecessary, it becomes a forgone conclusion before end credits even begin to roll. There, a title card proudly proclaims that most of the characters will be back in “The Real RocknRolla”. A sequel that Ritchie has been squealing about for months now. It’s a head scratcher, because a sequel seems quite unnecessary. Heck, watching RocknRolla in its entirety is sort of like watching three movies at once. Why do we need more of this? We don’t.

When a movie is too complicated, I have a tendency to check out. Sometimes I just don’t want too pay attention. The weird thing about most of Guy’s screen brought stories is that they appear to be these labyrinthine constructs on the surface. A maze of identities all intersecting in a pinball blast of substantial beats. It’s the twist and turn of the narrative that shoots out of this barrel at sixty miles per hour. But, like with his first two films, it turns out to be diarrhea of the mouth. Underneath the shattering teeth covered glass, there isn’t a whole lot of substance. Really, when it comes right down to it, there isn’t a whole lot going on here. Despite how much effort the characters put into pretending that they are dealing with a reasonable plot, they come up empty handed admits the sounds of that last gunshot. The subtext amounts to nothing more than a thousand rounds of blanks hand-rolled out of a plastic Gatling gun.

Imagine, if you will, that Guy Ritchie is in the kitchen of his luxurious home. It’s a Tuesday, and he wants to make a sandwich. There is a huge thick loaf of Italian bread. A quarter block of cheddar cheese. A tomato. But no meat. So he compiles his sandwich, and to fake the flavor, he slathers on a jar full of mayonnaise and brown sauce. It’s to cover up what the sandwich is lacking. He then pierces it with a toothpick, and calls it a day. That’s essentially what we get with RocknRolla. A big chunk of hard to chew nonconformist rhetoric that will leave you scratching your head as to what just happened.

Seriously. What just happened?

The plot is made from a whirlwind of fast moving parts that never seem to slow down. A narrator, who seems quite unnecessary and supports Ritchie’s lazy script writing techniques, is quick on the scene and explains that what we are about to see is based on the realtor business in London at this current moment in history. Things seem slightly interesting, until we meet a supposedly deceased rock star that is a dead ringer for Steve-O. After his squalid, crack pipe induced introduction, things start to slide off the plate in an unrecoverable pool of goo. To explain the story any further would be futile. An interesting mystery is not exactly why you go to one of these drive-in disasters in the first place. You pay that ten bucks for its style and c*cksure sway. And on that front, Ritchie delivers. The images are sometimes nice to look at. But like a painting in a gallery, how long are you supposed to stare before moving on? I’m not sure.

There is one great moment in RocknRolla that is on par with Ritchie’s best clip hits. And it comes on like this film’s first and only single. A one hit wonder that will leave you breathless. A small time crook named One Two (Gerard Butler) is trying to get into the real estate business. He’s attempting to steal a couple million quid from another entrepreneur, so that he can pay off a debt. And two huge thugs are hot on his tail. It is an endless chase sequence that utilizes every Ritchie cliché to great effect, and it almost makes you wish the entire movie could be just as good. This heart-squeezing teaser is almost enough to recommend the film to you. Just know that the rest of the on-screen running time never delivers another moment that matches its sheer intensity. And when placed into the context of a whole evening, it shines as a smiley afterthought that might just get left behind like a bucket of half buttered popcorn, there, on the Cineplex floor.

Like every single Guy Ritchie movie to date, it’s hard to hate RocknRolla. You desperately want to like it while watching it, yet it never rises to any sort of commendable level or meets any off handed expectations. As great as the thug chase is, there are three or four unnecessary paragraphs featuring the truly awful chemistry between Americans Chris “Ludacris" Bridges and Jeremy Piven. One guy doesn’t know how to act, and they other stares on, dumbfounded, looking as though he wishes he were anywhere else. I’ll let you guess who is who. For every wonderful moment like the hilariously awkward dance off between Gerard Butler and Thandie Newton, there are four or five more chunks of clunky dialogue that get slathered onto the crimped proceedings. I get the sense that this is supposed to be “fun”, but Guy never allows that emotion to seep into the narrative. Even he seems to be yawning through most of his own ideas.

As much as I wanted to enjoy the film, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. When it was over, I couldn’t care any less that there was a sequel coming. At that point, I wanted to give the screen a flip of the finger. My middle name is, “F*ck all ya’ll!”

The hooligan hustle down deserted train tracks? The bruise bang tango? There are certain little moments like these that get a big {bold|Whoop-doo!} But for the most part, Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla had me screaming, {bold|Boo!}

(All of B. Alan Orange’s reviews are based on the Boo! or Whoop-doo! evaluation system.)

Previous thoughts on the film:

Guess what? I really liked Swept Away. Not the original 1974 Lina Wertmuller version. I haven’t seen that one. I’m talking about the Guy Ritchie directed abomination starring his wife Madonna Louise Cicconi-Ritchie. It was a change of scenery for the crime caper perfectionist. And though it was horribly acted, and paced like a nubby chump on a broken crutch, I found it to have a certain cult-like charm that isn’t often intended to carry such a weight on its shoulders. Basically, its dumb fun that bobs at the surface of illiteracy. That atypical sort of horrible movie you can’t help but stare at like a car crash. As a matter of fact, I like all of Guy Ritchie’s films. At least the four I’ve seen anyway, and that one BMW car commercial. The guy has a stated style and energy that seems stamped on his work like a watermark.

Even though there isn’t a bank robbery to be seen in it, you automatically know you are watching a Guy Ritchie movie when you look at the vast impressions sewn into his Swept Away. This Virgo has a masterful hand, and a tediousness that lends itself to an effervescing, constantly flowing current. Last year’s Revolver appeared to be the second coming of Snatch. At first glance. But it was really a meditation on the Id, and a bunk dive into Kabala 101 (even though the director has wrongfully denied that fact). For what it is, it’s an interesting character study.

Now, with RocknRolla, Ritchie really does seem to be returning to his Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels way of visually thinking out loud. And it’s sort of exciting. It’s like watching 50 Cent return from his time spent recording two Country Albums. You just know in your heart that it will be good. Though, there is a major problem with the narrative, and it’s one that will slow this sucker down, making it a blight on some poor soul’s lonesome DVD shelf. That singular problem is: Art. The film is about stolen paintings. The art world. And museums. Despite it looking like a rollicking good time, this dusty McMuffin will surely turn people away. Just look at the history of the art film. The subject is prone to boring even the classiest of people. Hold the phone. I’m not talking about you, Mr. Movie Snob. I’m talking about Joe Average sitting in his doublewide, waiting for that frozen pizza to cool. He’ll take one look at this and say, “Cool, guns!” Then, a minute later, he’ll say, “Art? Museums? What the flidget?” And he will turn it off.

The problem with this idealism is that Joe Average is the person that makes up the general audiences of America. And (s)he’s the one that will make or break a film like RocknRolla. I have no doubt that it is going to shake the piss out of a petrified baby. But a big hit? It ain’t going to be. Just look at John Larroquette’s Hot Paint. Though funny, it was delegated to Sunday Night at the Movies on CBS. Why? Because people hate seeing the film world and the art world collide. It’s as easy as that. Good luck, Guy Ritchie. I wish you the best.