"RocknRolla"

Oct. 8, 2008 | Guy Ritchie's two rough-and-tumble mobster pictures, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" (1999) and "Snatch" (2001), may have earned the writer-director a reputation as a flashy stylist with a knack for grim wit and jokey-brutal violence. But those movies have always struck me as purely ornamental, and his latest picture in that vein, "RocknRolla," follows suit: It's like a lumpy, overworked, useless objet that someone who doesn't know you very well might give you as a gift, a thing that sits around the house serving no unearthly purpose other than reminding you, none too subtly, that it's completely hollow. I love a shallow, stylish exercise as much as the next guy. But I'm not sure Ritchie's particular brand of slice-and-dice storytelling can even be called a style. It's more like an applied technique -- a... [read full story]