By Linda Winsh-Bolard
The films open with narrated explanation Archie (Mark Strong), what is RocknRolla:
People ask the question...what's a RocknRolla? And I tell 'em - it's not about drugs, drums, and hospital drips, oh no. There's more there than that, my friend. We all like a bit of the good life - some the money, some the drugs, other the sex game, the glamour, or the fame. But a RocknRolla, oh, he's different. Why? Because a real RocknRolla wants the fucking lot.
As today’s London is becoming fast the world capital of crime, at least in current films, the new and old crime bosses meet (again) in Guy Ritchie's film.
Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson) is the old school villain, cruel and crude, in sun glasses and well pressed suits, dealer between crime and government, who is used to his ways, his power and his invincibility.
Uri (Karel Roden) is the new crime boss, Russian, relaxed, reckless, with no conscience, a proud owner of a London football club with ambition to fit in.
They meet through a mutual interest in purchasing the building permit Yuri needs. The city planning commission can tie his project up for years, and Yuri does not have the needed contacts-yet. Lenny promises to deliver; his hands are squeezing the city officials for years, for a price. When Lenny and Yuri share a drink, and whiskey meets Perrier, it becomes neatly symbolic.
Uri Obromavich is gangster just as Lenny, but where Lenny is not ashamed of what he does, and how he does it- gardening implements, water dipping, domestic violence as well as guns, nor does he bother with pretensions (I can see at least 20 buildings that the city did not want to build. You know who build them? Backhanders like me?), Yuri likes paintings, crystal and hypocrisy.
Archie’s narration, he is second-in-command to Lenny, punctuates the film which jumps between current time and about 15 years in the pas, and employs the swirls between Lenny and rocker Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), Lenny’s wife’s child, a missing painting, the beefy ambitious gangster One Two (Gerald Butler), a beautiful accountant (Stella Thandie) Newton and her husband who gives the opportunity for endless homosexual innuendos. Indeed, homosexuality is one strangely prominent streak in this otherwise somewhat long, overcomplicated gangster movies (Russian killers dancing to rock’n’roll stripped to little more than a loin cloth and an army cap?).
Visually it acceptable and the editing is quite good, but writing was never Ritchie’s strong point and it becomes weak sludge in this case. The dialog is occasionally biting (Like all Americans they kill anything native, and still they are hungry…Lenny‘s observation is possibly one of the Guy’s best lines in the film)
it is relatively fast, but it is not knew- the underbelly of London tainted with Russian newcomers seems rather overplayed lately, the folds of the story overlap so much that even the narration doesn’t help to clarify what is going on, the twist, while nice, comes late in the film and there are parts that have way too much of monologs that are simply out of place. Worse, a good gangster thriller is worked out, this one leaves you unconvinced and confused.
Directed and written by: Guy Ritchie, Camera: David Higgs, Editing: James Herbert
