Film review: RocknRolla

ROCKNROLLA (15)
***

DIRECTED BY: GUY RITCHIE
STARRING: GERARD BUTLER, TOM WILKINSON, THANDIE NEWTON, IDRIS ELBA, MARK STRONG

FIRST things first: Guy Ritchie has always known how to shoot the hell out of a scene. Even pretentious gibberish like Revolver – a film I loathed – had some set-pieces that would rightly shame those pretend British movie-makers who think it their right to churn out publicly-funded dross that no-one goes to see. His skills as a writer, on the other hand, have left a lot to be desired. The excessive use of try-hard mockney, the one-note characters, the lame gags, the convoluted plot lines – there's only so much you can disguise with gorgeous slo-mo, Brad Pitt and tricksy underwater boxing matches.

The good news about RocknRolla is that he's actually made something that narrows that chasm-like gap between his screenwriting abilities and his camera skills. It's no candidate for greatness, but it flows in a way that his other films – even his early, popular ones (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch) don't – and the benefits are immediately obvious. That exaggerated dialogue no longer grates (at least, not as much). The humour is breezier, the laddish overtones offset by a tongue-in-cheek take on machismo. And the plot, while still labyrinthine, is solidly constructed; it has a rhythm that makes it easy to get caught up in.

Part of that is down to having a cast better equipped to handle the tonal shifts from knockaround caper to more menacing gangster flick. Gerard Butler and The Wire's Idris Elba are immensely likeable as, respectively, One Two and Mumbles, a couple of mid-level criminals whose attempts to get in on the capital's property boom sees their crew, the Wild Bunch, in hock to big-time "fixer" Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson). Their efforts to raise the cash to pay him back – aided by a glamorous danger-courting accountant played by Thandie Newton – are unwittingly interfering with Lenny's own attempts to fleece a millionaire Russian property developer, whose love of art provides the film with its Macguffin when his lucky painting is ripped-off after being entrusted to Lenny as a sign of good faith.

Weaving in and out of all of this is crack-addicted rock star Johnny Quid (Toby Kebbell), whose centrality to proceedings – his character supplies the film with its title – only begins to become apparent after being properly introduced in the film's second half. Whip-thin and by turns entertainingly bonkers, mystical and deadly, Johnny is like Mick Jagger in Performance crossed with Sid Vicious. Kebbell – emaciated, unpredictable, edgy – steals every scene he's in.

Visually, of course, it all looks great. Once again, Ritchie shoots London with the vibrancy the city demands. A dynamic, chopped-up chase sequence featuring an out-of-breath Butler taking a hammering as he tries to outrun some vicious Russian gangsters provides the film with its action highpoint.

There are wobbles too, though. A running gay panic joke involving One Two and his best friend Handsome Bob (Tom Hardy) is initially amusing until Ritchie overplays it. Thandie Newton's character is all but abandoned in the final reel. And there are a couple of liberal borrowings from Pulp Fiction and The Departed that are just too obvious to ignore. But the positives outnumber the negatives and for the most part this is a slick slice of disposable mainstream cinema, the Brit equivalent of Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's movies (only without the smugness). When the closing credits state, James Bond-like, that the Wild Bunch will return, it feels more like a promise than a threat.