Rating: 
Summary: You want it, You buy it, You¿ve got to see it,
Review: Guy Ritchie has taken the crime caper genre and fashioned it into a helter skelter ride through London's east end. Four best mates Eddie, Tom, Bacon, and Soap put their nest eggs on the line for their mate Eddie. Eddie is one of the East End's top card players. He and his mates conjure up 25,000 pounds each, so that Eddie can play in the high risk, high reward card game with Hatchet Harry. The game goes horribly wrong and Eddie Leaves owing Harry half a million pounds. Harry's henchman gives Eddie and his mates one week to pay the money or he starts taking their fingers for collateral. The four friends embark on a riotous journey through the East End's underworld to find half a million pounds. Guy Ritchie's debut film in America is filled with laughs from start to finish and changes the way that comedy/crime is intertwined in a movie. It is a style unlike America has ever seen and it should be welcomed with open arms by anyone willing to sit down and Laugh out loud.
Rating: 
Summary: Wanted to watch it again immediately - excellent!
Review: This movie will serve as Guy Ritchie's benchmark for a long time to come. Tremendously funny story - like a cockney version of "Reservoir Dogs" with a buddy film mixed in. Fantastic characters and great performances by some (then) unknown and lesser known actors. The dialogue in this film alone is so sharp, hip and funny that the audio track alone is a great listen. Inventive use of stop & fast motion scenes with excellent music pairings make for several unforgettable moments that will stay with you long after the film is over. Get the soundtrack too - they mix film quotes in between the songs - excellent
Rating:
Summary: A lot of giraffes in a movie that kicks a lot of khyber
Review: In baseball they talk about the best all-around players as being "5-tooled": they hit for average, hit for power, run, play defense, and throw. To become a 5-tooled filmmaker, one would have to: present stunning and effective visuals, control a propulsive story, create indelible characters, write smart and important dialogue, and select a fitting and articulate soundtrack. In contemporary cinema only two American auteurs, Wes Anderson and the Coen Brothers, come even close to filling out all five criterion. You have to cross the pond and get a Brit, Guy Ritchie, to find my choice as today's only 5-tooled filmmaker. With his debut movie, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", he proves why.Visually, "Lock, Stock..." is a stunner. Ritchie's camera is free and expressive and full of energy, while never relying on the tired and the cliched to make a point. Two sequences quickly come to mind. The first, which I call the "I can't believe I lost it all" scene, displays Eddie's dismay after [losing] out in a high-stakes poker game. The woozy, punched-in-the-gut feeling that we all can relate to in moments like this is stunningly captured by an array of subtle camera tricks. No words are spoken, but Eddie's anguish is palpable. The second sequence, which I call the "let's celebrate by getting [blind drunk]" scene, details the cathartic elements of consuming massive amount of alcohol. It begins with wretched excess, and ends with sloppy sleep. Anyone familiar with a night of drunken revelry will have it immediately called to mind in this, another wordless sequence. Throughout the entire film, Ritchie doesn't spare any part of his visual palette, always in a tasteful and significant way. The story he's come up with is just delightful. It's infinitely more complicated than most contemporary gangster films, weaving a labyrinthine path from start to finish that always has the audience guessing. That is until the key moments when it wants the audience to know exactly where it's heading. It then telegraphs, most amusingly, the next plot point. One such moment sees a gang driving back home after a job. The audience has just seen a bloodbath at their destination, and can't wait to see what the characters' reaction will be when they arrive. Ritchie's command of dramatic irony is astounding in these moments, as is his ability to keep clear several dozen parallel plots. It all leads up to an ambiguous ending that reminded me a lot of John Sayles' "Limbo". You don't necessarily know what happens after the credits have rolled, but it doesn't really hurt your enjoyment of the story (in fact, it helps. A lot). Patrolling this story is a vast army of characters, none coming close to a third dimension, but all somehow fully drawn anyway. Ritchie gives us clueless would-be cons, ganja growing private school boys, aggressive and unpredictable black gangsters, a sadistic card sharp, and a paternal debt collector. All are skillfully portrayed, funny, and believable. Ritchie wastes little time developing character, but manages to anyway. Clever shortcuts, such as the names he gives them speak, volumes without saying much at all. A ruthless gang leader is appropriately named Dog. The moneylender's muscle is named Barry the Baptist, for his predilection towards drowning his victims. And in one of the film's most curious running jokes, a skinny member of Eddie's gang is nicknamed "Fat" Tom, a sobriquet even he doesn't understand. All of these characters are skillfully acted, more often than not by credible non-actors. Notorious footballer Vinnie Jones is the best of the bunch, as Big Chris (who squires around his son, Little Chris, to jobs). Jones shows true menace under Chris' relaxed exterior. Jason Statham and Lenny McLean are the other amateurs who bring real life grit to their roles. North American audiences may have a tough time chopping their way through the jungle of Cockney accents, but if they can they'll find that Ritchie's dialogue is stylish and sublime. One of my favourite irritated monologues, in a film full of them, is this gem spoken by Rory Breaker, the aforementioned unpredictable black gangster: "If you hold back anything, I'll kill ya. If you bend the truth or I think your bending the truth, I'll kill ya. If you forget anything I'll kill ya. In fact, you're gonna have to work very hard to stay alive, Nick. Now do you understand everything I've said? Because if you don't, I'll kill ya." It's stylized, true. And funny as heck. But as written, and especially as delivered, it's a menacing little bit of theatre. Furthermore, Ritchie's reliance on Cockney rhyming slang gives the film an authentic and puzzling tone. Thankfully, the DVD comes complete with a rhyming slang dictionary, so it's ham and cheesy to get a translation in no bird. The soundtrack holds a mix of songs from many disparate styles. But they always manage to provide relevant commentary on the action, and they always make the action, and sometimes the audience, move. We've got a couple of James Brown tunes, a track by the Stone Roses, the Stooges doing "I Wanna Be Your Dog" in one hilarious moment, and Robbie Williams (!) punching up the action in another. The punkier elements mix perfectly with the funkier ones, creating a unified message where I'd thought one couldn't ever exist. After the first time I saw "Lock, Stock..." in theatres, I made it my mission to create a good word-of-mouth buzz about this film. I wouldn't shut up about this fantastic little movie. It's the kind of edgy, addictive cinema that should be more common and more popular. I'm doing my best to spread the word. Won't you follow me?
Rating:
Summary: BOOOOM!!!
Review: this is one of the most satisfying and incredible hilarious movies ever made!!! when i first saw it, my neighbors called me and complained about my laughing. the plot is very good, as only Guy Ritchie can make it. And the actors does their part excellent. especially Vinnie Jones was worth watching, as he always is. i have only one thing left to say here:
buy this movie!!!
Rating:
Summary: Caution: Empty contents of mouth before viewing!
Review: You'll laugh so hard you'll spit! This movie takes a cast of ingenious British actors and sets them in motion on a mission to bust your gut. This is a sure hit for anyone looking to laugh the night away. Just be prepared to watch it a couple of times to catch all of the smaller, subtle humor that you will certainly miss the first time or two. Wild, crazy plot that will send you spiraling into madness as the cast works to pull of the heist of the century, and makes quite a few deadly mistakes along the way. Completely brilliant, a must see!
Rating:
Summary: Outrageous British dark comedy
Review: Most of the British movies that make it to America are either historical epics [Sense and Sensibility, The English Patient] or frothy comedies [Notting Hill, The Full Monty]. The truth is that, while their output is much smaller than ours, our Brit cousins make all sorts of movies. Most of them do not travel well. Some are about things that don't interest us. Others employ dialects we simply don't understand. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels concerns subjects dear to the hearts of many Americans - crime, gangsters and the male obsession with guns. Some viewers will want to avoid it because these things do not interest them. The lingo of the British lower middle-class will turn others off. I found it to be a wicked and inventive black comedy. While I did not understand every word of dialog, the very contemporary visual style got the point across. I didn't miss a thing. We meet four young men who are close friends. Tom is a card shark, Eddy and Bacon are con artists and fences, and the fourth wants nothing to do with criminal activity, which is why they call him Soap. Tom knows of a high stakes card game put on by the local porn king. Hoping to make a lot of money, each of the lads puts up 25,000 pounds. Tom winds up losing 500,000 pounds in one of the cleverest card games ever filmed. They have one week to repay the debt. This sets off a maniacal set of events, ruled by double-dealing and crossed signals. A fine set of eccentric characters inhabit the movie. There is the porn king, whose passion in life is collecting antique guns, two of which are of great importance to the plot. One of his henchmen spends as much time scolding his young son as he does beating people up. He's a ganster with a code of ethics, no less. There are the pot dealers who use so much of their product that they have no idea how much money they have. They keep it in shoe boxes, which proves to be unwise. The boys trying to find the half-million pounds are madly clever and clueless at the same time. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is extremely violent at times. There is a reason that it succeeds in spite of this, and that is because every single character is a criminal in one way or another. Since there are no innocent victims involved, it's all bad guys versus bad guys. While this does not make the violence okay, it does allow the movie to be free of the cynicism prevalent in most such films today. Because it shows only crooks who seem to relish their work, it is no more real than Batman. These made up characters in a made up story inhabit a London which does not really exist. This is nothing more than a yarn, but what a good one it is. It's a delight for those with a sense of the ridiculous.
Rating:
Summary: Don't expect to know how it ends after first 5 minutes ..
Review: This is one fab DVD, but, in order to enjoy it you will have to pay attention to the movie and it's dark , subtle humour wrapped in continuous twists and turns in the plot. There are no less than seven, yup count em sevendistinct 'gangs' and stories told in this movie, and all of them, are on an inexorable path to meet in one crazy funky climax and denument ..... One, Eddie and his three street wise friends try to make a score by getting into a high stakes poker game where he looses more than his .. ....
Two, Hatchet Harry the boss mobster has no problem in cheating Eddie and arranging thefts of some vintage shotguns .. I absolutely loved his muscle man ....
Three, A couple of petty crooks who steal the guns feel sorry for the mansion owners since they have the house full of old furniture ...
Four, A yuppie group ... with no way to even count the money they are getting ...
Five, An enforcer and collector with his ever present young son that work for Hatchet Harry and although he has no qualms in killing he'll get very very upset if you use foul language around him .....
Six, A small gang of local pushers that just happen to be neighbours of our heroes, Eddie and his gang ...
Seven, finally, you have babyface a black gang leader... .. OK, one fabulous viewing option on this movie are the English subtitles that really helps to follow the fast conversations with the heavy Brit dialect ..... If you also loved this Guy Richie film then I urge you to run out and get Snatch another great film in the genre .....
Rating:
Summary: Best depiction of the Eastend since, well...ever
Review: Guy Ritchie has certainly excelled and done himself proud in making Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. In a decade of more stylised films, thanks to the likes of Tarantino, Lock Stock stands as one of the finest "art house" films ever. The strength of the film lies in the dialogue of the four main characters, and is exemplified right from the word go. The opening scene in which we see Jason Stratham hawking goods on London's Petticoat Lane is so marvellously accurate (not to mention brilliantly funny) that it could have been taken with a camcorder on the actual street. Ritchie has an unreal knack for capturing not only the accents but the dialogue of real Londoners (being one, I have never seen a more accurate depiction in film.) In addition to his remarkably witty dialogue, his camera movements are magnificant, such as the scene were the protagonist leaves a rigged card game feeling drunk and disoriented. The filming is so good it makes yo ufeel as if you are right along with him. All in all, there a few finers movies one could purchase, and for any person who considers themselves literate in pop culture and film, Lock Stock is a movie that you simply must have, no questions asked.
Rating:
Summary: Blew me away
Review: This is one of those movies you have to watch at least twice, because there is so much going on you will definitely miss something the first time. This movie is funny, smart and full of East End color. (or colour :) The dvd includes a dictionary of the coloquialisms used-which is very helpful and interesting, but not necessary to enjoy the film. There is also some beautiful cinematography here, especially in the card game scene. I can't wait to see this again.
Rating:
Summary: If this is guy ritchies first film - freaking wow.
Review: This being Guy Ritchies first (not quite, but his first over 90 minute) film, wow. FREAKING wow. Creative camera angles, excellent plot, perfect cast of characters. Amazing. The movie in a nutshell is about 4 guys who invest pretty much add their life savings together and trust it to a friend (eddy) who is a cardshark to win them some major cash. He plays this guy named Harry - a cheater and a guy you don't want to f*** with. Turns out harry cheated (unknown to eddy the whole time). And if they don't get x amount of money by the end of the week, it's their fingers, and after that, their life. Now that the setting was layed out, hilarity ensues, violence, cursing, more violence, I wont give anything away though. The Dvd has a few good features, it isnt loaded on with a ton of features. It has a cockney rhyming dictionary, an amusing slang list of words used in the movie, a featurette, cast of characters. In my personal opinion - it is better than snatch, even though the two are basically equals, if I had to choose the better of the two I would choose this one. BUT - both are must haves, so buy them both.
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