The English Are So Comical When They're Being Criminal

One of the movies I received for Christmas was Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. It had always sounded interesting, I simply hadn't ever gotten around to renting it.

So I asked for and received it, and I watched it, and. . . well, it was funny, but I didn't wind up enjoying it as much as I had expected. I came away from it feeling I'd watched Guy Ritchie's A Continuum of Remarkable Coinky-Dinks. Gee, these guys need money, and they just happen to know of a weed seller that has lots of cash, but they live right next door to thugs who also plan to rob said weed dealer, but our weed dealers just happen to choose that day to lock the gate that bars entry to their place, stymieing the professional criminals. Oh, and our heroes' firearms happen to be valuable shotguns that were supposed to be stolen for the fellow they need the money to pay off, except he didn't receive them due to a misunderstanding, and now he's looking for those, and expecting their money, and after awhile it all started to feel a bit ridiculous.

I didn't think it was a bad film, but the level of fortuitous happenstance exceeded my limits. Still, one of my co-workers had Snatch, so I thought, what the hell, give it a try. The first positive is that I didn't feel the level of fortuitous happenstance exceeded my limits. There were certain points that pushed it*, but if the level of coincidence was equal to the earlier film, it was in a way that wasn't as obtrusive to me. Still, there is a remarkable level of inter-connection between characters that have barely met before this particular story begins. Maybe this says something about dishonest people, and how if you're constantly trying to pull fast ones on people, you can't be surprised when others do the same to you, and that the more people that get dragged into something, the more likely they are to cross paths, or double-cross paths. That's a little pun. Nearly microscopic, in fact. I don't think that's what Ritchie is driving at**, but it's something I take from it. Nobody has true loyalty to anyone else, except perhaps for Tommy and Turkish. Everyone uses everyone else, tries to kill everyone else, steal from each other, rip each other off, an endless stream of dishonorable deals. The two that are the worst at this, unsurprisingly, are Tommy and Turkish, as they seem to consistently be taken advantage of by all the others they interact with. Whether that's a sign they have stronger moral fiber, or that they just aren't as clever, or simply a sign of how little power they have in all this, that they keep having to get involved in situations that put them at a disadvantage, I'm not sure. I'd lean towards the second one myself.

I was reading a review that said the reviewer's problem with the film was Ritchie doesn't provide us with a reason to care about any of the characters. I don't know that I agree with that. I was at least a little concerned for Mickey, Tommy, and Turkish. Would Mickey throw the fight like he was supposed to, and would he get Brick Top for what he did? The odd thing is I wasn't feeling worried during the big bareknuckle fight scene and its aftermath, so I'm really inferring the concern, because during the extended sequence between the Vin/Sol duo and the Avi/Tony pair, I kept thinking to myself that they'd gone away from Turkish and Mickey's story for too long. I guess that's concern, though maybe just concern for the larger narrative. So perhaps the reviewer was correct after all.

I really do like Mickey (Brad Pitt). Actually, I usually like Brad Pitt when he plays less cleancut fellow. I guess he plays a dirty, goofy fellow well, though he's actually very clever here as well. Certainly not a fellow to be trifled with, or underestimated. I rather like the ending as well. I can't decide whether it promises happy days for our main characters, or the beginning of more hi-jinks and double crosses. On the whole, I'd say I liked Snatch more than Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Maybe it's all the bareknuckle fighting that puts it over the top. Man, that looked painful.

* The primary example being when Bullet Tooth Tony and Avi are driving with Boris the Blade in their trunk, only to crash because Tommy throws Turkish's carton of milk out the window and obscures their windshield, this as Tommy and Turkish drive to Boris' house to purchase a functional gun. The crash allows Boris to get out of the trunk, and as he staggers blindly in the street, because he has a bag over his head, gets hit by the car driven by Tyrone, Vinny, and Sol, who were looking for Boris to retrieve the diamond that Tony and Avi have taken from him already. That was pushing it.

** If he has a larger point at all. I'm not certain he wasn't just having fun with a story that allows him to use a cast of oddball characters.