Tag Archives: Jason Statham

Jack Brazil on Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrells (Guy Ritchie, 1998)

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Almost 25 years since the feature directorial debut of Guy Ritchie, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels not only holds up as an entertaining film but also conveys an energetic pace and cadence that continually excites across the development of his filmography.

 

Lock Stock’s simplistic yet intricate plot pits four young, cocky and naive London boys against a slew of hardened criminals and savage gangsters after they lose a rigged game of cards, having to repay a half-a-million-pound debt with a week to drum up the funds. Through several hyper-violent altercations and a pinch of good luck, the boys manage to walk away unscathed after dipping their toes into the criminal underworld of London. Along the way, Richie introduces us to colourful and larger-than-life stock characters that are entertaining plot devices and memorable in their own right.

The protagonist quartet; Tom (Jason Flemyng) Bacon (Jason Statham) Eddy (Nick Moran) & Soap (Dexter Fletcher) have an undeniably charismatic on-screen presence. The on-screen chemistry of Richie’s characters is a shining example of outstanding casting choices, many of the film’s actors were unknowns at the time and the overnight success of the film made stars like Statham immediately sought after and hot property. The back-and-forth banter combined with abrasively sarcastic and ‘laddy’ personalities is one of the few markers of the film being a product of its era, at the height of British working-class new lad culture. Maliciously charming debt collector Chris (Vinnie Jones) is type cast as a gangster, a parallel to his behaviour on the pitch as a professional footballer, Sting makes a cameo appearance as Eddy’s father and pro boxer Lenny McClean known as ‘the hardest man in Britain’ perfectly cast as monster man Barry the Baptist. London geezers-geezing, north-south divides with toffs and gangster clashes populate the gritty sepia backdrop of Richie’s east London. Richie’s razor-sharp and witty dialogue effortlessly characterises, informs, and entertains all with a sprinkling of dark humor which differentiates the film from others in the genre.

One element of Richie’s work that has defined his career as a director is his control of pace and cadence, few other directors of high profile are able to create kinetic energy on screen that matches. Richie’s command over pacing can be attributed to his experimental editing techniques, as a former music video director, Richie had plentiful experience with producing stylish and impactful content on a lower budget, controlling visuals to match audio, something that continues to be prevalent across his filmography. Richie’s stylish editing can be boiled down to the concept of ‘fast & slow’, in terms of formal elements this consists of; speed-ramps, freeze-frames, slow-motion, intercutting, parallel action and superimposition.

 

 

As his first film, Lock Stock is an example of Richie’s raw ambition on display, the cadence of Richie’s scenes is dictated by his efficient writing style combined with his stylish and temporally playful editing techniques culminating in unique kineticism that has become a staple of the sub-genre.

 

Jack Brazil

Practice Of Criticism Podcast 2022: Episode 1 – Lock Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels with Jack Brazil

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Almost a quarter century after its first release, Lock. Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (1998) remains immensely stylish and entertaining, a landmark film that drew on the tradition of the British gangster film and succeeded in changing the genre’s direction. Whether Guy Ritchie is underrated is a thread that underpins the podcast. Jack Brazil and José Arroyo also discuss the film’s style; the cadence, pace and editing with which movement and action are constructed and conveyed; we talk about its playful experimental tone; how it succeeds as comedy, and how Ritchie’s eye for casting launched one of the most important careers in the action genre for decades to come: that of Jason Statham, whose first film this is…. all that, and much much more

The podcast may be listened to below:

Jack Brazil & José Arroyo

 

Eavesdropping at the Movies: 162 – Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

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Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. If there’s a clunkier title out there, we’d like to see it. The first standalone film in the Fast & Furious series, and the first Mike’s seen at all, while José gave up some years ago, after seeing the first two. But José liked the trailer, and coerced Mike into accompanying him, which means that Mike now gets to force José to do something he doesn’t want to one day.

But, with expectations at an all-time low, Mike can confirm that he, in his words, “did not hate it”. In fact, despite it being obvious trash, with an entire family of awful, lazy jokes – the extended metaphors and puerile insults that The Rock and Jason Statham trade are comedy sinkholes – there’s quite a lot that charms us here. While Mike argues for the creativity and execution of the film’s action, José expounds upon his fondness for its stars, on the one hand through the humour and enthusiasm of The Rock, who Mike (who writes these descriptions) refuses to call Dwayne Johnson; on the other, Statham’s working class charm, which sets him apart from any other English star you’d care to name, all conspicuous products of privileged backgrounds and public schools, and none of whom can claim his level of box office power.

The film travels from one character’s home to another, beginning in London and moving to Samoa, leading us to discuss the film’s star vehicle nature – its stars are two of its producers, and indeed, there’s much in it with regards to their images that is closely controlled and orchestrated, Mike noting in particular the manner in which Hobbs, The Rock’s character, annoyingly laughs off Shaw’s insults, as if to say, “I’m The Rock, I’m very likeable and can take jokes”. But the move to Samoa in particular is one we enjoy, especially Hobbs’ slipper-wielding, affectionate mother, and the way his family and friends act as a unit and support him despite his estrangement from them.

Though we happily expound upon the things we enjoyed about the film, which are several, it is far, far from valuable or unmissable. Mike notes the enthusiastic response from the audience we saw it with, a response that rendered him emotionally bleak at sharing a room with them. Hobbs & Shaw is very well-made, expensively-produced trash, and José, for one, wishes we’d all venerate trash a little less.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

Eavesdropping at the Movies 80 – The Meg

 

 

Big shark, big Cockney, big fun. We dive into The Meg, a film we can all agree should have been called Chomp. It’s definitely trashy, though precisely how trashy is an area of disagreement. For José, it’s a bad movie. For Mike, it’s a good bad movie.

The podcast can be listened to in the players above or on iTunes.

With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.

The Expandables 2 (Simon West, USA, 2012)

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the expandables

Sylvester Stallone has had so many facelifts he now looks like an unsexy version of the cartoons Mad Magazine used to do of him in the 70’s.  Yet he’s now been starring in big-budget movies for close to 40 years. Bullet to the Head (James Bonomo, USA, 2012) also had a theatrical release earlier this year and is now out on DVD plus there are two more films currently in postproduction. The man’s career is unstoppable. Why that is so is a mystery: I can’t think of another star who’s sustained that kind of career for that long with barely two good films in his filmography — The Expendables 2 isn’t one of them. Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude van Damme, Chuck Norris, Dolph Lundgren and other 80’s action stars parade through the film like a taxidermist’s prize exhibit. Jet Li and Jason Statham figure as more recent generations of action stars. Liam Hemsworth presumably wants to join the club. It was a hit.

José Arroyo