The terrain is pure Guy Ritchie: criminal London, with its fast-talking gangsters, gorgeous femmes fatales and hilarious double-crosses. But the confidence and maturity is new. RocknRolla is a thrill ride from start to finish, and a welcome return to the smoking-barrels work that made Ritchie's name in the late nineties.
When a billionaire Russian mobster arranges a shady real estate scam and produces scads of money, all of London's criminals want a piece of the action. Washed-up rock stars, dangerous crime lords, sexy corrupt accountants, crooked politicians and down-and-out petty thugs get caught up in the rat race, and all of them plan to get rich or die trying.
The film's all-star ensemble cast includes Gerard Butler as a street-smart criminal who has learned to skilfully accommodate multiple conflicting parties; two-time Academy Award®-nominee Tom Wilkinson as an unrelenting mob boss; Thandie Newton as an unprincipled accountant with strong ties to the underworld; actor/rapper Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and Jeremy Piven as two Americans trying to make it big in London's music scene; and Toby Kebbell as Johnny, an off-his-rocker British punk star.
Each of these characters, among the film's many other money-hungry miscreants, scheme, steal and meet head-on with one another in a life-or-death grab for the ultimate payoff. Favouring bullets, broads and bad guys, Ritchie's stylistic sensibility is back in full force, and packing some serious cinematic firepower. Never afraid to throw visual thrills at the audience, he marshalls his pyrotechnics with new discipline. RocknRolla may be the tightest, most pleasurable film Ritchie has yet made, and it's as audacious as ever.
Cameron Bailey
Guy Ritchie was born in Hatfield in Hertfordshire, England, and began his career as a commercial and music video director before writing and directing the short film The Hard Case (95). In 1998, Ritchie wrote and directed his first feature film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which became a major international success. Ritchie's other films include Snatch (00), Swept Away (02) and Revolver (05), which played at the Festival in 2005. RocknRolla (08) is his latest film.