Dom Robinson reviews
Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels: Distributed by
Producer:
(The Innocent Sleep )
Screenplay:
Music:
David A. Hughes and John Murphy
Cast:
Tom: Jason Flemyng (Alive & Kicking, Deep Rising, Hollow Reed, The James Gang, Rob Roy, Spiceworld: The Movie, Stealing Beauty )
Soap: Dexter Fletcher (Bugsy Malone, The Elephant Man, Jude, Lionheart, The Long Good Friday, The Rachel Papers, When The Whales Came, TV: Press Gang )
Eddy: Nick Moran (Buddy's Song, Clancy's New Kitchen, The Future Lasts A Long Time, Hard Days Hard Nights )
Bacon: Jason Statham
Winston: Steven Mackintosh (The Grotesque, Land Girls, London Kills Me, Prick Up Your Ears, Twelfth Night, TV: The Buddha Of Surburbia, Undercover Heart )
Big Chris: Vinnie Jones (Gone in 60 Seconds, TV: Ellington )
JD: Sting (Brimstone and Treacle, Dune, The Grotesque, Quadrophenia, Stormy Monday )
Dog: Frank Harper (For Queen And Country, In The Name Of The Father, Twentyfourseven )
Hatchet Harry: P.H. Moriarty (The Inside Man, The Long Good Friday, Patriot Games, Quadrophenia )
Barry The Baptist: Lenny McLean (The Fifth Element )
Rory Breaker: Vas Blackwood (TV: Casualty, Lenny Henry Show )
Barfly Jack: Danny John-Jules (TV: Red Dwarf )
Gary: Victor Maguire (TV: Bread )
Serg: Mark Mooney
Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels: Director's Cut Guy Ritchie , which gained plenty of press attention
for providing another debut in the guise of ex-footballer Vinnie Jones
as debt collector Big Chris. However, to pinpoint only one aspect of this
film doesn't do the rest of it justice.
Tom, Soap, Eddy and Bacon are four young men in their mid-twenties who could do
with some serious money, which isn't easy to come by. After a lot of saving up,
they've brought together £100,000 which Eddy will use as his bargaining
power in a game of poker with violent gangster Hatchet Harry and his associates.
Before long, their dreams turn sour and the rigged card game puts Eddy in
serious debt with only a week to find the money to pay him off. Not an easy
task, but it's worth noting - for them - that their local loan-shark lives
just next door and a break-in may be the answer. To go any further into the
plot would rob its surprising twists and turns, suffice to say that it involves
rival drug gangs, sharp comedic lines and unexpected shock events, so much so
that to this reviewer it makes this film Britain's answer to True
Romance and Pulp Fiction .
There's also a wealth of talent involved such as Dexter Fletcher ,
best known to TV viewers as Spike from Press Gang , rising star Nick
Moran as the not-so-card sharp, Steven Mackintosh as one of a group
of flatmates who don't have to go shopping for drugs because they grow their
own marijuana in-house, pop star Sting - one of the few
singer/songwriters able to act well in interesting roles, one-time Lenny Henry
sidekick Vas Blackwood cast against type as one of the most menacing
and violent men you'd never want to come across, Victor Maguire (aka Jack
from Bread ) and Mark Mooney as two small-time criminals who
accidentally find themselves mixing in with the big-time crowd, there's a
cameo from Danny John-Jules (aka Cat from Red Dwarf ) as a barman
and the theatrical debut for ex-footballer Vinnie Jones .
In addition, there's dialogue in this film to put it on a par with the excellent
Trainspotting . Approximately 91 minutes in, after the main four return
to their flat to find it broken into, all their loot and dope stolen and the
front room in a post-shootout situation, three of them discuss :
1. "No money. No weed. It's all been replaced by a pile of corpses"
2. "Don't panic. Let's think about this."
3. "Fuck that, you can think about it. I'm panicking and I'm off!"
This director's cut contains 12 minutes of extra footage not put into the
previously-released version. The front cover of the video, but not the DVD, makes a
selling point by stating,
"The version the did NOT show in the cinema" , as if it's something particularly
gruesome that you're about to see but it's just a few extra additions to the running
time including a brief explanation of the game of Three-card Brag before the opening
credits and some out-takes over the closing credits.
The picture quality is very good but not perfect. It cures the scenes that had
noticeable artifacts on view from the theatrical version and has a higher average
bitrate of 7.42 Mb/s often peaking at 9Mb/s. It is also anamorphically-enhanced
for widescreen televisions.
While the original release contained a widescreen and fullscreen version, there's
just a widescreen version here on a dual-layer disc which helps improve the picture
quality, but bizarrely, while the original release had a ratio of 1.85:1, this
version is slightly less-wide at 1.77:1 (16:9), resulting in a slightly-zoomed-in
version but it's not noticeable when watching the disc unless you're able to run the
two side by side on two widescreen TVs...which I don't have access to.
The sound on the disc is Dolby Digital 5.1 in English. If you haven't got a
DD5.1 setup, the sound is downmixed to Dolby ProLogic. While the dialogue and
sound effects come across crisp and clear, the best thing about the soundtrack
is the large amount of top tunes such as "Hundred Mile City" (Ocean
Colour Scene ), "The Boss" & "The Payback" (James Brown ),
"Spooky" (the late Dusty Springfield ), "Liar, Liar"
(The Castaways ) and many more. There's many a surround-sound moment
spread throughout the film in scenes you'd expect, such as when the Bren Gun
makes an appearance and in scenes where you'd least expect.
Extras :
Chapters :
Languages & Subtitles :
The disc contains an English language soundtrack in Dolby Digital 5.1 plus
subtitles for the same. The subtitles do a good job of keeping up with the
fast-paced talking and when a song begins, the title is displayed more often
than not.
Booklet :
Menu :
The interactive menu works well and is animated with a clip of Vinnie Jones
when he pays a visit to the sauna. This time round there some soft soul
music over the top in the form of Mauro Pawloski's "Oh Girl" , which
begins with the lyrics "I'm eighteen with a bullet..." in case, like me,
you're not familiar with the song title but have heard the song before, unlike
the previous release which was silent. In the scene selection menus, some of
those animations have been changed but not all.
Vinnie Jones, for the most part, isn't quite as menacing as the other gangland
types or as good as reports would have you believe, but it's his first film
and it will be interesting to see how his career progresses starting alongside
Nicolas Cage in the forthcoming car-crime actioner, "Gone in 60 Seconds" .
If his acting improves though, it will surely be down to the multitude of fine
actors on display in this film.
Aside from this, Lock Stock... was genuinely the best British film of
1998, but for this special edition DVD some more extras would have been a nice
addition and in fact this release loses the interviews that were on the first
release. Hence, if you already have that DVD the extra 12 minutes aren't worth
a whole twenty quid. I don't know if the original videos and DVDs have been deleted
but the director's cut is no doubt the version that'll be on sale from now on.
If you'd like more information on this film, check out the official Website
at :
http://www.lockstock2barrels.com HERE
FILM : *****
PICTURE QUALITY : ****
SOUND QUALITY : *****
EXTRAS : **
-------------------------------
OVERALL : ****
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.
[Up to the top of this page]
Amazon.co.uk Widgets
DVDfever .co.uk - Est. February 25th 2000
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
