Revolver (2005)
Directed by Guy Ritchie
Hotshot gambler Jake Green is long on bravado and seriously short of common sense. Rarely is he allowed in any casino because he's a bona fide winner and, in fact, has taken so much money over the years that he's the sole client of his accountant elder brother, Billy. Invited to a private game, Jake is in fear of losing his life.
8 connections found
View:
8 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Revolver to
For his fifth feature film, Guy Ritchie happily ignores his previous twomisfires ( Swept Away and Revolver ) and goes back to what he does best,making dime-store, knockoff pulp thrillers.
With Rocknrolla, his incoherent, inhuman follow-up to the Kabballah-influenced Revolver , he continues to twist and writhe, attempting to replicate the success of his violent and ultra-hip freshman and sophomore efforts.
Wrong-footed by the new credit-crunch zeitgeist, but with recovered fluency after the hiccups of Revolver and Swept Away, director Guy Ritchie's latest returns to the caper comedy antics of unreconstructed London criminals familiar from his earlier Lock, Stock... and Snatch.
"RocknRolla" is a recovery from the knockout blows of his past two films — a disastrous remake of "Swept Away," starring his soon-to-be-ex-wife Madonna, and the inscrutable fantasy crime fiasco "Revolver" — but Ritchie is certainly retreading familiar thematic territory.
The literal entirety of REVOLVER where it’s a Brit gangster film but also a meditation on the inner beast that lives inside all men and limits their progress.
As bad as that was on every conceivable level, it almost seemed plausible when compared to his next two films, “Revolver” (2005) and “Rocknrolla” (2008), increasingly convoluted attempts to return to his crime film glories (with the former throwing in bits of Kabbalah mysticism for good measure) that pleased absolutely no one.
Grant at least has disreputable fun at the expense of those journos who’ve crossed him, yet a coasting McConaughey renders Mickey an uninteresting cypher whose Zen koans (“Doubt causes chaos, and one’s own demise”) revive the unfortunate memory of Ritchie’s existential-drama-but-with- Jason-Statham misfire “Revolver” from 2005.
Things move a little bit slower, and his cast of characters have risen up a few rungs on the social ladder, but The Gentlemen is a worthy addition to the old school Guy Ritchie “good” pile with Snatch , Lock Stock , and RocknRolla (not you, Revolver ).
The Gentlemen is being touted as director Guy Ritchie's return to form after the abysmal Aladdin, the underwhelming King Arthur and 2005's remarkably tedious Revolver .
SCREENED AT THE 2005 TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL: To those of you who were just sure that Guy Ritchie's "Swept Away" was some sort of aberration; a massive misstep after the criminally enjoyable double feature of "Lock, Stock..." and "Snatch," well, I have some seriously bad news.
Guy Ritchie's latest movie isn't "Swept Away" bad.
Word was that Guy Ritchie’s “Revolver,” when first released in Great Britain two years ago, was a return to his neo-gangster roots, a movie more in the “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” vein than “Swept Away,” his disastrous effort with wife Madonna.
British director Guy Ritchie made a name for himself with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, before sullying that name with the straight-to-video abomination that was Swept Away.
But after literally being "Swept Away" by the disastrous reception accorded his ill-fated collaboration with his missus -- Madonna -- Ritchie unfortunately allows his reach to exceed his grasp in attempting to unravel the Game of Life.
Guy Ritchie's follow-up to his 2002 Madonna fiasco Swept Away took two years to make it to the U.S., and it promptly disappeared.
If you liked “Donnie Darko” and David Cronenberg’s “Naked Lunch”; if you enjoyed “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” and Michael Haneke’s early films – and the underappreciated third film of George A. Romero’s zombie trilogy, and Zack Snyder’s “Sucker Punch” – well, then I think you’re good with “John Dies at the End.” (You might have to admit that you kind of liked Guy Ritchie’s idiotic work of Madonna-informed mysticism, “Revolver,” and you certainly have to be excited about Giamatti’s upcoming role in Ari Folman’s “The Congress,” adapted from a novel by Polish sci-fi cult hero Stanislaw Lem. ) Like I say, self-limiting.
Advertisement
However, if the deja vu don’t get you (it feels like elements of Falling Skies, Starman, The Island and This is Not My Life have been put in a blender and mulched into a schmaltzy, sappy pulp) then the portentous and pretentious dialogue, the worst use of voice-over since Jason Statham in Revolver and the repeated slapping of Ronan will.
His latest, “Wrath of Man,” directly recalls one of his lesser known offerings, 2005’s “Revolver,” with Jason Statham navigating through some twisty shenanigans.
The director and star combined in the 1990s with "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" -- which highlighted the former's kinetic style and the latter's brooding intensity -- but last teamed up on "Revolver" in 2005.
His theatrical follow-up is another crime thriller and it repairs the director with Jason Statham ( Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw ) for the first time since 2005’s Revolver .
And yes, the film stars Ritchie regular Jason Statham, reteaming with the director for the fourth time (although it’s been a stretch since the pair’s most recent collaboration, 2005′s forgotten-to-time Revolver).
But it has been a long time since their last outing together – 2005’s “Revolver” – and a lot has changed, with both men venturing more fully into the realm of the blockbuster.
Over the decades Hollywood has found the armored truck heist genre irresistible, so it isn’t so odd that Jason Statham and director Guy Ritchie would center Wrath of Man , their first screen teaming since 2005’s Revolver, around the idea.
The old rap on Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) is that he makes the same film again and again, and Revolver starts out in that snazzy-crime vein, as an ex-con (Jason Statham) plots revenge against a well-dressed gambler (Ray Liotta).
British director Guy Ritchie made a name for himself with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, before sullying that name with the straight-to-video abomination that was Swept Away.
Considering that the director is the hip and violent Guy Ritchie, the man behind Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, this might seem surprising - until one sees this disastrous mess that is masquerading as a motion picture.
“ Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels ,” his two Sherlock Holmes films, “ Snatch ,” the bizarre self-help action film “ Revolver ” and 2015’s unexpectedly marvelous “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” are assortments of savory treats presented in the most stylish boxes Ritchie can devise.
Who can remember/forget that triptych of stiffs Swept Away , Revolver and RocknRolla ?
Several of his previous movies, like RocknRolla and Revolver, have been gaudily preposterous; but two of them—his Sherlock Holmes films, with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law—have also been ragingly profitable.
For his first decade, most of his movies are stylized British crime capers: Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels; Snatch; and, less successfully, RockNRolla and the appalling Revolver.