To me, this movie is perfection.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Long-time friends and small-time criminals Eddy, Tom, Soap ,and Bacon put together £100,000 so that Eddy, a genius card shark, can buy into one of "Hatchet" Harry Lonsdale's weekly high-stakes three card brag games. The game is rigged however, and the friends end up massively indebted to Harry, who fully expects them not to be able to come up with the money before the deadline he gives them. He has his sights set on Eddy's father's bar as repayment, and sets his debt collector Big Chris (who is often accompanied by his beloved son, Little Chris) to work in order to ensure that some form of payment is coming up.Harry also has his sights set on a couple of antique shotguns up for auction, and gets his enforcer Barry "the Baptist" to hire a couple of thieves, Gary and Dean, to steal them from a private home. The two turn out to be highly incompetent and unwittingly sell the shotguns to Nick "the Greek", a local fence. After learning this, an enraged Barry threatens the two into getting the guns back.

If you combine Quentin Tarantino movies with a bit of Marx Brothers slapstick humour you get "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". All you have to do is picture Chico severing your fingers. The quirkiness may be fun to watch, but this comedy crime caper is overwhelmingly wallowing in its complexities and is handled quite efficiently. It comes as an obvious trait that Guy Ritchie used to direct commercials if you noticed a scene where a man is throwing vegetables into the water and we get a close-up to the bottom of the pot. The plot focuses on a poker star from the rough side of London's East End named Eddy (Nick Moran) who gets hired by three alliances to gamble up his profits to a high stakes game against Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty), who is a kingpin in the gambling a porn industry. Harry uses dirty tactics to win which leaves Eddy in a bind and Harry's guard Benny the Baptist (Lenny McLean) gives these suckers three options,either pay up, take over the pub that's owned by Eddy's father JD (Sting) or get your fingers severed. So Eddy and his friends snoop on the neighbours in their apartment who happen to be crooks with a master plan to rob from a rich druggie. All this is happening, Barry hires two bumbling thieves to confiscate some authentic antique guns for Harry . The guns wind up in Eddy and his gang, rob the drug money and then the rest of the way needs no further explaining. Or do you if you want me to give away spoilers which I won't. The movie turned out to be a very successful film back in Britain. In North America it came out first at the Sundance Film Festival. Although it was entertaining fun, you could still get lost in the shuffle due to the confusing plot and the English lingo in a very British film. But after a second viewing, I understood the dialogue better and plot felt less convoluted. It's safe to say the characters were a little miscast due to the fact that they might be a bit too young and inexperienced for a very gritty film. Unlike Tarantino who in "Reservoir Dogs" used veteran performers in his film. Eddy's gang comes across as a bit too youthful to be dealing with scumbags or even running around London with these scamps. And with the neighbours being druggies, it's hard to come by as to who is who. The more convincing cast members are from the antagonists Harry and Barry and even impressive was the character who played Big Chris (soccer star Vinnie Jones) who was notorious for choking a rival by the balls. But through the mindset of the East End it looks believable in the settings being that it is dark, cold and the scoundrels that surround the area add to the authenticity that London is not all blessed with royalty and fish n chips. In spite of its dreariness, there is a lot of excitement that comes with this movie. The soundtrack featuring mostly rock music is the perfect choice of the atmosphere. The narration keeps the story to a steady flow and is not afraid to add runaway gags if feel the need to. When Eddy and his gang enter into a pub we see a man in flames staggering at the door. They stare at him concernedly, nod their heads and walk in. The pub they walk into is called Samoa Joe's a spoof of "Pulp Fiction" with Big Kahuna Burgers and and Jack Rabbit Slim's restaurant and they're also sipping drinks with the little umbrellas too. There's a lot of Tarantino influences this movie has to provide and spotting the references can almost feel like a game. That and along with other Hong Kong based film and British noir films of the 1950's. The closest this film comes to a striking resemblance is the 1950 British noir film "Night and the City" which is a criminal caper set in the East End and a high stakes kingpin hires a buffed up bodyguard to do his dirty work. As the film comes to the close you try to decipher what had just transpired. As it turns out the style fairly outweighs the substance and it never tries to deny such claims. We don't care much about the characters (though I was intrigued by the character Barry the Baptist over anyone else). The film's humour factor lies within the style of utilizing freeze frames, witty subtitles and speed-up and slow-motion angles. But it's still a fun slapdash film with exuberance and intrigue so if you can't encode to their English dialect, the characters add enough excitement to overcome that obstacle.

A complex, ultra-black comedy packed with violence and profanity, this is one of the best films to come out of Britain in recent years. Ignore the seriousness of other thrillers like FACE, and instead concentrate on the hilarious dialogue and fun characters which this film is full of. From 'Hatchet Harry' to 'Barry the Baptist', this film has an endless parade of clichéd villains who are an absolute delight to watch, not least Vinnie Jones' hard debt collector who enjoys slamming people's heads in a variety of doors.There's an obvious influence here from Tarantino's work, but the two directorial styles are very different. Director Guy Ritchie has some weird, trippy moments in this film, to counteract the smoothness of other scenes. The comedy comes from the increasingly confused situation in the film, and is consistently funny. The acting is all pretty good, with top marks going to Dexter Fletcher ("Guns for show, knives for a pro"). The violence is frequent but never done in a serious matter; there are loads of shoot-outs and bodies everywhere, but they're not to be taken seriously. Basically, this film is perfectly done and one of the liveliest London gangster films ever made. See it!

A great film depicting a London Underground crime scene; money, drugs, and two sought after barrels.The movie is shot through interwoven stories of different operations in action beneath the legality of the city. At first you wonder how all of these characters could possibly relate to the main story, but trust me, they do, and it is a blast.A midst thievery, debauchery and bloodshed the movie delivers style, comedy, charm and it even manages to fit in an upbeat message along with it. Karma is mentioned cleverly in the film, but I'll allow the viewer to piece it all together as they watch.Pay attention though, this movie delivers just enough information to keep the plot straight!