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Lock, Stock and two Smoking Barrels
- favourite film

There are just not enough old fashioned heist movies around, but when a good one is made it stays in the national memory: The Ladykillers , Layer Cake and The Italian Job (whose ending is in a small way echoed in Lock, Stock) immediately spring to mind. Guy Ritchie with his first full-length film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels added to that list. The movie’s plot is energetically complicated, with a dose of farce nicely exploited by the director-writer; the characters are larger-than-life, the action often improbable and contrived but nonetheless enjoyable. It is a scary-side gangster romp, dare one say it a bloke-film, with guns, cars, cards and cash jumbled up and teased apart with power and wit if not subtlety – a roast dinner rather than crab cakes with coffee mousse. It gave Vinnie Jones his break as an actor; was instrumental in the rise of Jasons Statham and Flemyng and of Dexter Fletcher; and even gave Rob Brydon a holiday from voice-overs. Cinema can be great art; and it can be great fun. Lock Stock is for those of us who like the fun bit. It will have amused its backers too, reportedly made for under £1 million, and thus far thought to have earned more than 15 times that sum.

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