Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

Three Stars

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) was released in the midst of a crush of post-Tarantino indie crime movies. Some of those were good, some were bad, and many were mediocre. Lock, Stock managed to stand apart from the crowd due to its hyperkenetic style and overall sense of fun. Watching it now, it definitely feels rooted in that time and place and perhaps more than a little derivative—owing as much to Scorsese and Hong Kong action movies as Tarantino. Still, the film has an infectious energy and features some fantastic needle drops ranging from Britpop to punk to Zorba the Greek.

The plot of writer/director Guy Ritchie’s debut film is, putting it mildly, labyrinthine (some might say convoluted) and involves a lot of characters and parallel storylines. The main thrust is that four friends—Eddy, Tom, Soap, and Bacon—put together £100,000 to stake Eddy (Nick Moran) in a high roller card game organized by local gangster, “Hatchet” Harry Lonsdale (P.H. Moriarty). Eddy is supposedly a brilliant card player but the game is rigged and the lads wind up owing a tremendous debt to Lonsdale who demands payment within a week. By a stroke of luck(??) they overhear their neighbors—a different crew of gangsters—planning a heist with a large payout. The friends then hatch a plan to rob those robbers so they can pay off their debt and save their skins.

There’s an additional story involving the theft and botched sale of a pair of antique shotguns and multiple groups of thieves, gangsters, drug dealers, and enforcers all swirling around this East End neighborhood scrambling for the same fortune. It’s not always easy to keep the motivations of everyone straight, but the eccentric characters provide a lot of the fun of the film.

Unfortunately, the main characters (including the debut of Jason Statham) aren’t that interesting outside of being young and ambitious and stupid. Is there a worse scheme than betting their collective life savings in a high stakes card game with legendarily brutal gangsters?? On the other hand, the casting of the heavies is truly marvelous. Former footballer Vinnie Jones (also debuting) is fantastic as the enforcer Big Chris who travels everywhere with his identically dressed son. Lenny McLean as Barry the Baptist and the aforementioned P.H. Moriarty (Razors in The Long Good Friday) bring real-life gravitas as the main gangsters. McLean’s accent is virtually incomprehensible at times but I’d gladly listen to him recite the phone book (sadly this would be his last film). 

The rogue’s gallery is rounded out with Vas Blackwood’s psychotic Rory Breaker—a man who can casually set someone on fire before returning to watching sports on the pub television. Because some of the gangster characters are so entertaining, it seems a shame that we have to spend time with some of the less interesting ones like Dog and his gang or the college-boy pot growers.

Still, for everything that doesn’t work that well in Lock, Stock there’s an excellent counterpart keeping the momentum going. Mediocre protagonists, brilliant bad guys. Muddled motivations, excellent tunes. Messy plot, but still a good time watching it unfold. The one thing that Lock, Stock isn’t charming enough to get around is how terrible it looks. Shot on 16mm in weathered yellows and browns, Perhaps meant to evoke gritty, British crime films of the 70s but completely clashes with some of the slick, technical camerawork on display. Lock, Stock isn’t a great movie, but it’s a solid debut and worth watching for those delightful gangster performances as well a cracking soundtrack.

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is cheaply available on Blu-Ray (including steelbook if you’re into that kind of thing) and streaming on Netflix at the time of this writing.