Louts of Laughs By Stephen Hunter Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, March 12, 1999

Four blokes from London star in "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels." (Gramercy) Director: Guy Ritchie Cast: Jason Flemyng; Dexter Fletcher; Nick Moran; Jason Statham; Steven Mackintosh; Vinnie Jones; Sting Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes Extreme, if playful and foolish, violence and the F-word inserted at least twice into each line of dialogue

It's one reason why there isn't an England anymore; they've gone bonkers trying to be us.

Still, Ritchie's "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" is a considerable kick, though it would have helped if one of the boys had wiped off the lens of the camera once in a while. It appears to be shot on film stock discovered in a sunken freighter in the Channel. It has the murky, muddy color scheme of faded travelogues from the '50s like "South Africa: Land of Flowers and Sunshine." It's lit by four flashlights, a candle and the reflection off somebody's glasses.

It's a comedy of no manners at all. You might call it a comedy of louts, or a lout-o-rama. Our heroes are the least objectionable of at least four separate sets of louts, but they're in the worst trouble because one of them is cheated by Hatchet Harry in a high-stakes poker game, so they owe Harry – a nasty boy, with two different enforcers – half a million pounds ($800,000), which they must raise in a week.

Now it happens our four live next door to another four – much cheekier, creepier – louts, who plan to rob yet another set of four louts, simple-headed Eton boys who grow jujuweed in the basement and are backed by a crime lord and have acquired a major store of cash. So our four decide to rob the four louts who have just robbed the Eton boys. Eventually, all these bodies are set in motion and bounce and careen across London's East End, guns blazing, cars crashing and cockney patois denser than London fog filling the air. And there are even more bodies put into play: two burglars, the crime lord's gang of louts, the son of one of the enforcers (learning the family trade), a zonked girl on a couch who just happens to know the firing drill for a Bren gun, and a poor parking cop who bumbles into all this mayhem and is punched silly by every set of louts.

Ritchie has probably seen every movie ever made, but he's seen all of Tarantino's twice and all of Richard Lester's three times. Think of "Lock, Stock" as "A Hard Day's Night" with sawed-off shotguns. It's a running, jumping and standing-still film, but most of the running, jumping and standing still is done in the editing room, where the director tries every trick ever invented. If you don't like one, relax; you'll probably like the next one seven seconds later.

Acting is hardly the point, but the fellows who play the living-lout cartoons are generally effective in a one-dimensional way. Astutely these four actors have separate bone structures and haircuts (or hair colorings), so it's easy to tell them apart. I would give you the character names, but what difference would it make? The actors are Nick Moran, Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng and Dexter Fletcher. Hatchet Harry is unpleasantly realized by P.H. Moriarty, and the nasty enforcer Big Chris is played by an English soccer star named Vinnie Jones, evidently famous during his sporting days for head-butting opponents unconscious. Now that's DEE-fense!