Movie review: RocknRolla

Beware of Russians comparing scars.

by John P. Meyer

London property values must be recession-proof. (Make that "financial system collapse-proof.") That's the first thing we notice going into Guy Ritchie's action-packed, black comedy crime thriller, RocknRolla.

Low echelon hustlers One Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) want to work a deal with London crime boss and real estate racketeer Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson, employing his native British accent for a change), whereby they provide him with funding and he works his municipal zoning magic to make it worth ten times as much after the next city council meeting. Only Lenny intentionally torpedoes the deal, as a means of reminding the ambitious underlings of their natural (lowly) place in the scheme of things.

Meanwhile, he (Lenny) is working his own high-level deal with an expatriate Russian mobster named Uri (Karel Roden, more sinister here than when we encountered him in Shut Up and Shoot Me). But Uri's accountant, Stella (the dangerously skinny Thandie Newton) is bored with the routine and is seeking some dangerous spice. That's how she hooks up with One Two in a scheme to separate the bigger, badder guys from their large suitcases full of dirty money.

Yeah, it's a bit of a complicated setup, but don't let that put you off - director/screenwriter Ritchie (who still has a leg up on his estranged wife in the movie-making department) breezes through the multifarious thieves-stealing-from-thieves plot strings in painless fashion, almost as quickly as I'm describing them to you here - and in far more entertaining fashion.

The colorful supporting players include Tom Hardy as a complicated hood named Handsome Bob; Nonso Anozie as a Tank, a street thug with a taste for the classics; Jimi Mistry as Councillor, Lenny's municipal code expediter with a keen sense of self-preservation; Toby Kebbell as Johnny Quid, the crack-addicted rocker who single-handedly brings down a crime empire (though not intentionally); and, most notably, Mark Strong turning in another standout performance as Lenny's ruthless right-hand chap, Archie.

Linking the plot elements and characters is a fabulous MacGuffin in the guise of a painting, which we never actually see as it's passed around from one character to another with sly sleight-of-hand, resulting in windfall or catastrophe to whoever possesses it.

RocknRolla is brimming with style, from the whip-smart street slang to the sudden unexpected flashbacks to what's got to be filmdom's most severely-edited sex scene, encapsulating the passionate grunts and gasps of two of our protagonists in the space of perhaps five seconds. The most thrilling - and uncontrollably hilarious - segment involves a cash heist gone sour in which two Russian tough guys just keep on coming after their robbers, regardless of the mayhem perpetrated against them. My advice: beware of Slavs comparing scars.

It's during this apparently endless chase scene that Ritchie's cinematographer (David Higgs) breaks out what can only be referred to as a "stumble-cam," which matches the motions of a running (or stumbling) actor while looking back at him; from our point of view, the character remains motionless while the landscape around him jerks about in fits and starts as if in the midst of an earthquake. Hard to describe, but a neat and whimsical effect.

The chase does eventually end, with an exchange of international hand signals that will entice a guffaw from all but the coldest of river Thames fishes in the crowd.