Surviving In The Afterglow: Something About Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla-- Written By Jerry Dennis

“I'm setting up the biggest deal in Europe with the hardest organization since Hitler stuck a swastika on his jockstrap.”
-- Harold Shand from The Long Good Friday

“I'm looking for a different kind of satisfaction.”
-- Wilson from The Limey

“You're on two per cent, two and a half, maybe even three. Depends on the usual bumflufferies. It's not about the money with you and me is it, Gal? It's the charge, it's the bolt, it's the buzz, it's the sheer fuck off-ness of it all. Am I right?”
-- Don Logan from Sexy Beast

While watching Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla, I could not stop thinking of the very last line of Ian Gittler’s amazing coffee table book, Pornstar, where Jon Dough recites one of the famous lines from On The Waterfront:
“Everybody works today.”
The same can be said of Guy Ritchie’s latest gangster film with its large cast. Tom Wilkinson, Mark Strong, Jeremy Piven, Gerard Butler, Ludacris, Thandie Newton, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Gemma Arterton, Toby Kebbell and a whole slew of characters are on full display. Everyone was burning up the set to ensure that Mr. Ritchie’s latest vision of criminal hijinks in the London underworld went off without a hitch. If I did not know any better, I would have to say that RocknRolla wants to be the like those crazed British comedies from producer Charles K. Feldman from the 1960’s such as Casino Royale and What’s New Pussycat. All we need is Tom Jones and Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass blaring in the background and we might be there. At times, the film seems like it does have that manic edge to it as those films have in their apocalyptic climaxes. The miracle of RocknRolla is that it is able to seem somewhat fresh in a year which has also seen such brilliant crime films as In Bruges and The Bank Job. While I am not sure how RocknRolla stacks up against those two films, I do know that it captures some of the fun and magic of Mr. Ritchie’s first two films; Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The Guy Ritchie of those two films was missing in Swept Away and Revolver.

Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen had no idea that Guy Ritchie would be fighting the ultimate two front war of the 21st Century. It is safe to say that Mr. Ritchie’s luck took a turn for the worst when he married Madonna and his creativity paid a price. Who in their right mind decides to remake Lina Wertmuller’s Swept Away? We were lucky that the film was an outright failure and pulled from theaters after a couple of days. Imagine if it had worked-- a true Pandora’s Box would have been opened. Madonna might have insisted that she was the rightful heir to Giulietta Masina and insisted that Guy remake Nights Of Cabiria and La Strada. We should thank our lucky stars this never happened. Federico Fellini would have come back from the dead and raised unholy hell. Madonna’s greatest failure was that she was not able to pull off Evita-- a role that was tailor made for her. She was no match for Patti Lupone. On their own, Madonna and Guy Ritchie are incredible artists, but once they got together creatively, it was artistic poison. This relationship was not good for anyone, but it is Guy Ritchie who was fighting the two front war-- during the day on the film set and then in the evenings with Madonna. The effects of the marriage can be seen in the philosophical meanderings of Revolver. Despite Jason Statham’s and Ray Liotta’s presence, the film never comes alive and feels more like a dirge than anything else. I am sure that Bernard Henri Levy will write a book about it called, Who Killed Guy Ritchie’s Revolver? And in my usual smart ass way, I will have to say we all had a part in it. RocknRolla is not a comeback for Guy Ritchie; it is a very loud fuck you to complacency and the passage of time that has escaped him over the years. Guy Ritchie could have easily been a stand in for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Caden Cotard in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York and Madonna could have easily played Catherine Keener’s Adele Lack. While he was playing house, Matthew Vaughn (his producer on his first three films) directed Layer Cake, one of the coolest British Gangster films in many years. It was revelation in the sense that maybe Mr. Vaughn was the real brains behind the success of Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. You see, I was lucky enough to be at a screening of Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels in January 1999 when Guy Ritchie introduced the film to the audience. He was such a nice, young chap. That was almost ten years ago, but that young man is gone and he now has the scars from Madonna, her book writing phase for children, Kabbalah, and her Filth And Wisdom. Needless to say, Guy Ritchie has been fighting the ultimate two front war of late. RocknRolla may very well be his salvation back into the arms of loving film fans the world over.

I dare to say it, but I am willing to bet that sometime in the middle of this decade, Guy Ritchie and Joe Carnahan met in secret and made a pact. In a way, Smokin’ Aces and RocknRolla feel like the same film. I am not just saying this because Jeremy Piven happens to be in both films. The films have a very strong Quentin Tarantino influence in them. I was surprised that Joe Carnahan felt the need to pay so much homage to Tarantino in Smokin’ Aces, but the film also had a Guy Ritchie feel to it. For much of its running time, Smokin’ Aces seems obsessed with trying to out do the climax of Tony Scott’s True Romance which Quentin Tarantino wrote. Well, in RocknRolla, Mr. Ritchie is obsessed with Pulp Fiction like never before. Certain scenes are framed very much like in Pulp Fiction and we have a painting that we never see in the film. The painting is the MacGuffin just as the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. We can go all the way back to Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly which Pulp Fiction, Repo Man, Lost Highway and Southland Tales all pay homage to it in great detail. Just for record, Southland Tales may be the single greatest homage to Kiss Me Deadly (as well as one of the great films of the decade). Thank you for allowing me to have that sacred tangent. The Tarantino influence cannot be denied in either film, but what surprises me is why two very accomplished filmmakers would feel the need to use Tarantino so much? Carnahan proved himself an original filmmaker with Narc and Ritchie’s first two films showed that he knew how to make good British Gangster films. The other trait that both films display is the large cast of characters that are all interconnected in some way. Yet RocknRolla’s greatest Tarantino influence might be Guy Ritchie’s imaginary London underworld. The Los Angeles of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction only existed in his mind. The same can be said of Guy Ritchie’s London in RocknRolla.

Tom Wilkinson’s Lenny Cole, a London real estate fixer, seems to be a direct descendent of one of the greatest gangsters in British cinema-- Bob Hoskins’ Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday. The Long Good Friday is a 1980 film directed by John Mackenzie; it is the greatest British Gangster film of all. It comes after Get Carter, Performance and The Italian Job-- each of these are classics, but The Long Good Friday is in a league of its own. Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren were never better. The film paved the way for such films as The Hit, Sexy Beast, Croupier, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, My Kingdom, The Limey (Terence Stamp gives the film its British gangster creed), Layer Cake, The Bank Job and the early Guy Ritchie’s films. Before The Long Good Friday, it was all about Mike Hodges who gave us the original Get Carter and would later give us Clive Owen in Croupier and I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. There is nothing quite like a British gangster film and there is really nothing quite like an excellent British gangster film. When we are young, we like to think of our fathers as Marlon Brando’s Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather, but as we get older, we realize they are more like James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano from The Sopranos. Yet for some us there is the middle ground, and that middle ground is Bob Hoskins’ Harold Shand. Wilkinson is in top form as Lenny Cole. Cole is the epitome of the old school. Wilkinson has the great distinction of playing one of the founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin in John Adams this year as well as James Baker in Recount-- needless to say, I kind of trust Lenny Cole more than I do James Baker. I have yet to see Tom Wilkinson deliver a poor performance. He is a class act and he is one of the main reasons that RocknRolla works as well as it does. I cannot help thinking that Lenny Cole is the logical heir to Harold Shand. He is the brutish cockney gangster who is the kingpin of London’s thriving real estate trade. No one has had this must fun since Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan in Sexy Beast. Lenny bribes the lawyers and politicians or even has to use brute force to make sure his deals get through.

The story centers on a deal between Lenny and Russian mobster/developer Uri (Karel Roden). Uri owes Lenny seven million Euros to get commerce and zoning going in London. In exchange, Uri lets Lenny borrow his “lucky painting”-- that canvas that we never get to see. The painting changes hands many times; it is very hard to keep track of it. Everyone in the criminal underworld wants a part of this deal; everyone wants their slice of the pie. I love the way Ritchie uses the Russian gangsters as symbols of global capitalism run amok. Ritchie presents the Russians as codeless thugs while Lenny’s ilk have some sort of code. The film is quite a surreal experience to watch as a global financial crisis is unfolding right before our eyes. While this film was being made, London was the financial hub of the world. My challenge to Ritchie and other filmmakers is to make a gangster film with the oncoming global recession as the backdrop. Fabian Bielinsky’s brilliant Nine Queens used the Argentina’s debt crisis as the backdrop toward the end. And no, the 2004 American remake, Criminal, does not count. The current crisis makes RocknRolla seem like a period piece in many regards.

The rest of the cast does a fine job rounding out the other storylines in the film. Mark Strong plays Archie who works for Lenny and as in Body Of Lies, manages to steal every scene in which he appears. Gerard Butler, One Two, (300 and Dear Frankie) is one of the thugs who works for Lenny; he is partners with Idris Elba’s Mumbles. Together, they lead a team of rascals known as the Wild Bunch. Thandie Newton fairs much better here as ice cold Mob accountant, Stella, than she did as Condoleezza Rice in Oliver Stone’s W.-- to be fair she was not given much to do in that film. She has great chemistry with Butler’s One Two. Yet, it is Toby Kebbell’s junkie rock star, Johnny Quid, who waxes philosophically about the meaning of life in the film. He like, Strong’s Archie, are two lost children striving for their father’s love in the film. In the end, it is these two men who may be the RocknRolla’s of the film’s title. It is after all Archie in the film’s opening lines that tells us what a RocknRolla really is:

“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.”

While Lenny certainly represents the heart and soul of the old school, Archie seems to understand the game better than his bosses or anyone else around him. He is a new kind of “sexy beast.” If Archie reminds me of anyone, it has to be Daniel Craig’s XXXX in Layer Cake-- another sexy beast.

Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla may not be one of the best films of year, but it is certainly one of the most entertaining films I have seen from him in many years. He got his vibe back to do what he does best-- creating colorful characters and situations in his own version of London’s criminal underworld. RocknRolla, like his previous gangster films, boasts a wonderful soundtrack that includes songs by The Clash, The Hives, Lou Reed and Black Strobe. He does this very well and while I do not think the film is in the same league as The Bank Job and In Bruges (which opened earlier this year); I think it is genuine escapism which never hurts in these frightening times. The film is an orgasmic release from a man who has been imprisoned too much by the cult of celebrity. His Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. may be the film where he truly finds his voice. Sherlock Holmes may be the film which shows he truly survived the afterglow and is the stronger for it.