User Reviews

In London, the British mob boss Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson) rules the growing real estate business using a corrupt Councilor (Jimi Mistry) for the bureaucratic services and his henchman Archy (Mark Strong) for the dirty work. When he lures the small time criminals One Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) in a transaction, they lose their property and owe two million pounds to Lenny. Meanwhile the Russian entrepreneur and Russian mob boss Uri Omovich (Karel Roden) meets Lenny for a real estate business and Lenny charges seven-million Euros for the deal; Uri accepts, calls his accountant Stella (Thandie Newton) to laundry and raise the necessary funds and lends his lucky painting to Lenny to bring success and fortune to their business. However Stella double-crosses Uri and hires One Two and Mumbles to steal the amount while the painting is stolen from Lenny's wall by his addicted rocker stepson Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell).

"Rocknrolla" is another great movie of Guy Ritchie in the same style of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". The complex and intelligent screenplay entwines characters and funny situations and the result is an entertaining movie with witty lines and excellent acting. Tom Wilkinson is fantastic in the role of a powerful crime lord. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Rocknrolla"

The film-making here leverages a very simple idea that I'm amazed isn't used more: a reliance on narration, both over and in the film. Usually, the idea is to avoid excessive explaining and simply show what you need to. But Richie goes to the other extreme, distracting us from the fact that it isn't cinematic by using overtly flashy edits.

This reliance on explaining allows him to exploit multiple simultaneous cons. Everyone here has some duplicity underway and most have some independent story as well. Its as if Richie starts with a specific number of characters, makes a pass through on having each subvert the reality of the others, selects which main and alternate realities to follow in voice, and then adds some humanizing or interesting strokes.

I don't think I could take more than one of these every three years. I'd rather live in cinema than syncopated radio. But it is rather clever here, especially the business about performing: we have the rock performer (who is too stoned to perform), the painting (which we never see) and the performing accountant (whose sex is icy) as the tokens of the visual cinema.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

After making Swepted Away and Revolver Guy Ritchie's career hit the rocks and his reputation ruined. Luckily for him he returned to what he was best at and took a back to basic approach.

The film is a gangster story set in London. It tells of One-Two (Gerald Butler), who has a small crew, Mumbles (Idris Elba) and Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy). One-Two at the beginning of the film and ends up entering into a dodgy property deal where he owns money to Lenny (Tom Wilkingson), a major London gangster. Lenny basically tricks One-Two so that he could get the property and bribe the London council to let him build up the property and take all the profits. Lenny seeks to make a major deal with a Russian billionaire who owns a football club (I wonder who he is meant to be based on). The billionaire seeks to make a new concert hall very quickly, and wants to use Lenny's contacts to make sure that planning permission is granted. Lenny wants 7 Million Euros so he can do it. The billionaire has a dodgy accountant Stella (Thandie Newton), who asks One-Two to rob the Euros and takes a nice slice of the profits. At the same time the Russian also loans Lenny his lucky painting as a symbol of truth and as a thank you. Unforuately this painting is stolen by Lenny's rock star step-son Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell). As the film goes on all these story lines become interlinked.

Ritchie goes back to the types of films that made his name, which shows that he is really a one trick pony. This film felt a little be like a best of Ritchie. I felt that some of the sub-plot felt a bit tacked on, especially the part involving Johnny Quid and at times characters completely disappeared. The problem with Guy Ritchie is he thinks he is smarter then he really is and wants to be clever with his script. But at least for Ritchie he is in safe territory. Another problem is Ritchie is a mockney, a wannabe cockney, the kind of person most people look down on. However, there are positives. Most of the story does work, and some of the comedy is good. Fans of the original two Guy Ritchie film will love it for that. There is also a very good cast in the film. Tom Wilkington was the best as Lenny, the leading gangster, but most of the other actors gave very good performances. Butler and Newton are a very good actors. There were also fine set-pieces, especially the second raid against the Russians, and has a good comical fight in a sports shop. But at time it did feel like Ritchie took a style over substances approach. There is also an excellent soundtrack to the film, which is never a bad thing. If you are a rock fan you would enjoy it.

I personally feel that Ritchie could have cut some times from the plot and it would have made a better film. But there are good performances, and some fun bits and if you are a Guy Ritchie film would will enjoy this flick. A decent attempt.

Rocknrolla rocked me big time. I fall for everything that has to do with mafias and organized crime. This time, it goes further and displays the underworld of well, everything. Mafias are no longer exclusive for narcotics, it also deals with business men, bets, clothing, art, etc.

The events are fast paced and told through the eyes of two local robbers that are part of a quite peculiar group.

There's plenty of action but what I think is the best feature is Guy Ritchie's narrative. You never lose interest in the situations because every single scene is well directed and ambiented.

The dialogs are cool, the characters are badass, the women are insanely hot, and the events are connected in such a way that you can't help but feel "groovy".

I'm waiting for a sequel!

this movie without a doubt has the best style any movie can offer. there's not one thing i disliked about this film. the acting was superb. Ritchie's weaving complex story that he always does is brilliant. just everything is brilliant

the cast in this fantastic English gangster film is Gerard Butler (300) Tom Wilkinson (Batman Begins, In The Bedroom) Thandie Newton (Persuit Of Happiness, Crash) Mark Strong (Revolver) Tom Hardy (Bronson, Layer Cake) Toby Kebbell (Dead Mans Shoes) Idris Elba (The Wire) Jeremy Piven (Entourage) Ludicrous (Crash)............ now right there is an indestructible cast.

director Guy Ritchie has really made a full on classic with this one that i think is better than Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and on the same par as Snatch. you have to see it to believe it

Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson) is basically the main gangster in town but is starting to find it a little hard to run things when a new family move to the town. in between this film has some brilliant characters and really has you excited on what might happen next

this movie has to be watched by everyone that has good taste and i'm hoping Guy Ritchie will make more gems like this..... cant wait for his new Sherlock Holmes film, looks stunning........ 10/10........ j.d Seaton

In recent years the release of a new Guy Ritchie feature has become a major talking point - for all the wrong reasons. Not so much a launch, more a public flogging. You'd think that after the debacle of Swept Away and Revolver, he'd throw us all a sheepish grin and amble back to the pub. Yet, time and again, he drags his director's chair from the allotment and breezily plonks it down in the middle of the corpse-strewn warzone that is the business of film. At the very least you've got to admire his tenacity. And as he stresses, none of his movies have actually lost money so far.

Tom Wilkinson is Lenny Cole, old-style gangster-cum-property developer, with councillors and half of London's skyline in his sky rocket. A tax-dodging seven million euro deal with a new Russian oligarch on the block, the Abramovich-like Uri, is compromised after Lenny loses the "lucky" painting Uri has loaned him in a display of good will.

The painting, stolen by a couple of Scally junkies, winds up in the hands of Lenny's stepson, crackhead musician Johnny Quid, reported missing at sea, though very much alive and terrorising clubland. Because, clearly, that's what our wimpy, smacked-up, skinny-trousered indie rockers are capable of these days; leaving bouncers for dead.

Also in the mix are a trio of stick-up guys dubbed the 'Wild Bunch'. After finding themselves in hock to Cole, the Bunch hatch a plan with Uri's treacherous femme fatale accountant Stella (Newton) to rip off the Russian, acquiring that painting along the way.

Then things get messy. This is a Ritchie plot after all, akin to one of those children's puzzles where the finger must follow a number of tangled fishing lines to see if Ernie the Eskimo, Wally the Whaler or Pat the Poacher is having mackerel for supper. One thing you can be sure of: following a number of near-misses, each party will bump into one another at the climax and have a massive fishfight.

If this all sounds familiar, it's probably because Ritchie has just re-made Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. Not content with being a magpie's magpie (The Long Good Friday and Pulp Fiction are both reflexively referenced here), he's also started ripping off his own films.

Fair enough. Even the dimmest bulb must eventually come round to the fact that, when all else fails, it's prudent to nudge the least mouldiest bit of old fruit to the top of the apple cart. But a decade after Ritchie surfed that frothing zeitgeist, there's an appalling weariness about RocknRolla, a terrible sense of sadness, surely springing from the lesson that trying to bust out of one's own limited remit doesn't always pay off.

Unfortunately, the director can now barely remember how he got the right things right in the first place. Yet again, a film jumping with fantastic character actors has been utterly capsized by the script. There are actors here the calibre of Idris Elba - Guy (or his people) have been watching 'The Wire'. And Matt 'Super Hans' King - Guy (or his people) has been watching 'Peep Show'. And not least, the extraordinary Toby Kebbell, here apparently channelling Russell Brand.

Against Ritchie's juggernaut of mediocrity they are all powerless to resist. Mark Strong, for instance (in his second Ritchie film after Revolver), has been rewarded for his loyalty with a bigger role as Lenny's enforcer Archie - though simultaneously punished with more dialogue. It is deeply depressing to watch King voice lines like, "This lot are doing more bugle than a brass section" and indeed, every utterance sounds like a photo caption from 'Maxim' magazine: "In there like swimwear"; "Think before you drink before you drive me mad"; and repeatedly (that new favourite phrase of mockneys everywhere): "Jog on."

At one point, Uri actually says to Lenny without irony, "We are very much alike, you and I", while scintillating exchanges such as "Reality is a cruel mistress"; "I must remember that"; "Be my guest" are par for the course.

Elsewhere, there are some schoolboy giggles at the expense of Uri's enormous semi-naked henchmen, as if the Epic Movie team were remaking David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises; although, keen to emphasize his noughties credentials, Ritchie has Elba saying of a gay Wild Buncher, "If I could be half the human Bob is, at the price of being a poof, I'd think about it." Well, it's almost convincing. Yet as an encounter between Butler and the dull, not-especially-fatale Newton demonstrates, Guy's films aren't all that interested in straight sex either.

Those under-and-over-cranked cameras may be less in-your-face this time round, but there's no disguising the director's other tics; convoluted plot lines; daft-names; the same old railway arches and tunnels, 'gritty' backdrops for the same tired old chase scenes; those interminable cracker barrel philosophies, like sallies from a depressed barfly: "There is no spring without a winter. And no life without death." Or, "That which starts sweet ends bitter. And that which starts bitter ends sweet." It's as if Ritchie didn't realise Being There was a satire.

Wading through this stuff is akin to peeping through one's fingers at a retired, punch-drunk boxer climbing into the ring, or a recidivist junkie ripping out their naltrexone implants. It is especially traumatic to witness Stringer Bell from 'The Wire' wearing a motorcycle helmet with comedy teddy bear ears. In the run up to the film's release even Ritchie's US distributor, Warners, decided to scale down the film's marketing operation, saying "It's funny in spots..." but "not broadly commercial."

Someone thinks differently; at the end of RocknRolla comes the awful revelation: 'Archie, Johnny and the Wild Bunch will be back in The Real RocknRolla'; the first of two proposed sequels. As Archie muses, "That's the thing about greed. It's blind. And it doesn't know when to stop."

There is a new gang of Russian mobsters in London planning to create a real estate goldmine lead by Uri(Karl Roden). But they need the help of Lenny(Wilkinson) to get permission so he lends him his "lucky painting" this in turn disappears bringing Stella the accountant(Newton) and the Wild Bunch(Elba,Butler,Hardy) into the Fray. Amongst all this Is Rockstar Johnny Quid and his Agents(Kebbell,Piven,Bridges). Get ready for another multi stranded cockney Ritchie film.

First of all, so you know, I have been long anticipating this film (I mean who wouldn't just for the cast alone?) so didn't go in with low expectations, they were high and this film still managed to surpass them. Lets start with the aforementioned cast... they are all absolutely fantastic but they are aided by beautifully written characters. Gerard Butler(One Two) and Idris Elba(Mumbles) have more chemistry on screen than most Hollywood romcom leading couples. They snap and crack off each other like they've done it for years. In fact the entire "Wild Bunch" as they are known in the film provide some of its best moments, from a visceral heist scene with some unstoppable Russian heavies(which oozes style) to a hilarious running sub-plot about Bob's(Tom hardy) sexual orientation. Matt King also provides a great turn as the Wild Bunch's in house drug dealer Cookie, he also turns in one of the movies best scenes, an eerie narration on heroine addiction. Wilkinson is firing on all cylinders in a role that could have just been his Carmine Falcone with a cockney accent but manages to be much more as well as pretty scary. But it is Mark Strong who comes up trumps in this storyline, his portrayal of Archie the right hand man is probably the most rounded character in the film, full of humour and wit and with an undeniable likability he steals much of the scenes he appears in. And now on to Toby Kebbell as junkie Rockstar Johnny Quid, this is a role that if the academy were a little less narrow-minded they would consider supporting actor nod. He is scum, but his character is such that he is witty and somewhat of a poet/philosopher, fantastically written and Kebbell plays it brilliant. You are never sure what hes going to do next, I guarantee he will take you by surprise.

And now onto the man of the moment, Ritchie. There was a lot of scepticism about this film considering how badly his past two films did critically and commercially. But what is clear from this is that instead of going the safe root and doing a film that will please all he has once again done his own thing the way he wanted to do it and the result is a fantastic piece of film-making.

I really hope RocknRolla makes the money it deserves and gets a wider release in America, it is a film that needs to be seen. Its funny, clever, visually stunning and is a perfect example of a man doing things his own way and not succumbing to the pressures of the media. Well done Ritchie, well done cast, Im up for the Real RocknRolla and when you see it so will you!

RocknRolla is your average British gangster film with not to many thrills. It drags for most of the yawning 1 hour 50 minutes, but does however contain some minor successes. Firstly to state that RocknRolla is definitely Ritchies worst. Not only this but it lacks tone and deep story telling that Ritchie was once good at doing. It disintegrates also on action and comedy, which sadly adds to the further half-handed mediocre of RocknRolla. The characters however, do sometimes interest with their more than average dialogue and quirky sense of humour. Despite saying that the characters do make their fair share of jokes, this doesn't alter the fact that it's not consistency throughout Rocknrolla. The action and stylish violence that Ritchie once demonstrated in Snatch sadly is mislaid by a poor story.

So RocknRolla is by far not Ritchies best and should be kept away from audiences expecting the brilliance, well balanced story and classic action that Ritchie once shown in Snatch. Sadly though RocknRolla puts a downfall decline in Ritchies status and directorial package.

Early previews has called this a return to form. Hardly. This was for me, a major disappointment.

The moment the film begins, its as if it intentionally tries to confuse us as to what the hell this film's all about. Describing the plot is close to pointless. After all, Guy Ritchie isn't adept in the old art of storytelling, his films ran along the lines of sitcoms - a series of events instead of an actual story. Which wasn't a bad thing in the case of Lock, Stock & Snatch because emotional resonance with the audience was irrelevant. The goal there was to generate laughter. But RocknRolla is only funny in minor - and I DO mean minor - spots. What's more, it also doesn't help as it begins: of how it mentions that Britain is on the up in the property market. Seeing as of now the country is currently enduring credit-crunch problems, inflation rises and a major decrease in property value. You'd be surprised how automatically dated this makes the film.

Its unfair to judge a new film based on the director's previous efforts, but when its Guy Ritchie - who's been running on the same formula for the past 10 years - you can't help but do so. This film was advertised and touted as a return to form ala Lock, Stock and Snatch, but after the first time I watched those two, I loved them. Not looked at them with total scorn. The moments of humour and wit is few and far between, and some lines of dialogue and monologues try to add a little swagger but come off as pretentious and are inches away from falling into self-parody and returning to Revolver territory. And when the best laughs this film can generate involves around a character's homosexuality, you know this film is headed for the pits.

The performances here are strong, but it still doesn't account for the dialogue which just goes nowhere. The entire persona of Tom Wilkinson's cockney villain is almost entirely derived from Bob Hoskins in the Long Good Friday and Tony Kebbell's "Johnny Quid" (the RocknRolla of the film's title) is pretty much a totally pointless character - honestly, did this guy have any purpose in this film other than that he stole the painting? > No. In the end it doesn't help when the film's excuse for a plot is merely a bunch of distractions to hide what is really - a completely mediocre film. Its so convoluted anyway, its virtually nonsense.

Unlike Lock, Stock and Snatch, where all the characters and their situations are established, in this film they're not and it finishes with too many loose ends and plot holes, and contrivances. - What actually happened to Thandie Newton and the Russian with that painting? - Where did the whole Lenny's frame up of the characters come from then? - Will all this be revealed in Ricthie's intended sequel? Who knows? And who cares? Because if that were the case, the best described feeling that this would generate would be that you were cheated.

Guy Ritchie's flashy hyper-kinetic style is what keeps this film from being a total bore, but now's the time where he should stop writing scripts.

It's a gangster film with Guy Ritchie as the director and a cast like that, you already know it's going to be an amazing film. I had people telling me it's similar to snatch but not as good but I think it's just as good. I definitely enjoyed it just as much as snatch and I actually think the storyline is a bit better. They're 100% both 9's in my book. I just loved the way it all tied together in the end. It was also really funny which I don't see many people saying on here. If you're British you'll 100% find this funny. I'm also a sucker for a good happy ending and this provided perfectly.