Guy Ritchie
Lock & Stock

"But what is Pulp Fiction?" is the ironic line, whether intentionally or not, spoken by one of the main characters as he enters a room where a double shootout has just concluded.
If this were one of those comic strip reviews by Stefano Disegni, we would see the same scene as seen in the cinema, with a shadow rising among the audience and shouting at the screen "Eh maybe!"*
I approached the first film by Guy Ritchie, believing, no, in fact deluding myself, that I was going to see a more personal work compared to the successful "The Snatch."
I thought I had a clear idea: Guy wants to emerge and break through, he makes an indie film ("Lock & Stock"), it's well-received, and he wants to do something more refined, citing "Pulp Fiction" too much but with a cast of stars: and "The Snatch" emerges.
Since "The Snatch" seemed nice, I was certain that "Lock & Stock" would engage me and I would like it.

Guy Ritchie is famously known to most people only, whether undeservedly or not I have yet to decide, for being Madonna's husband, the artist well known to most, deservedly, for being a singer who has had financial success inversely proportional to her talent.
But here are some artistic-biographical notes: Guy’s parents separate, he has an older half-brother, he is dyslexic, and not yet sixteen, he is expelled from school for using soft drugs.
After shooting a short "Crime" film titled "The Hard Case," he founded, together with his half-brother, a production company, "Ska Films," between 1995 and 1998.
And it is in 1998 that the good Guy, just thirty-one, debuted with this film, a gangster comedy if you’ll allow the expression, in a lively, comic-book-like London, featuring a bunch of hapless crooks as protagonists.
They decide to pull off a heist by entering the underground gambling circuit betting a hundred thousand "quid" together, slang that ages quickly, unfortunately, only to lose to a powerful local boss; in debt, they have to "scrounge" five hundred thousand "quid" within a week.
If not, being in debt to a boss, you can imagine what they risk.
The film, according to some reviews I found online, deservedly received good critical and box office success: many reviewers consider it a three-star movie. Something on which I disagree.

As the story unfolds, the lives and actions of other characters, thieves, robbers, or weed sellers, will intertwine, or if you prefer, converge, apparently far from the main story, as a homage to the post-modern tradition: which tends to overturn stereotypes and place characters in unusual and unexpected situations, for the genre cinema, deforming basic characteristics and imparting a grotesque connotation.
These are features common to two films that likely fascinated and influenced young Guy, as well as other directors and all of us surprised audience members, "Trainspotting" by Danny Boyle and "Pulp Fiction" by the ubiquitous Tarantino.
The first for its rhythm, the second for the dialogues (which, let’s face it, are taken from Elmore Leonard) and the situations. See, for example, the two hitmen behaving and presented by Tarantino as regular professionals, like two plumbers; here the same happens: like mighty Vinnie Jones (Big Chris in the film) roams around London beating up debtors always with his Beloved son (Little Chris, obviously), even at the porn mogul’s office, who keeps vibrators in plain sight on the desk, nothing of this disturbs his educator's conscience, except hearing his child swear, threatening him to stop.

This aspect of the muscular henchman portrayed by Vinnie Jones is not shown to soften us or display his human side but merely to give shape to those grotesque humor situations I mentioned above.
A trend, at the time, besides to the two films mentioned, reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk’s books, based on improper characters and dark humored stories.
All this could, therefore, explain its box office success in Europe and America, but in my opinion, not the critical acclaim.
I find the settings very beautiful and the attention to certain scenic details, but surely good Guy exceeds in using those techniques considered innovative at the time: split screen (essentially splitting the screen) or slow motion, too, too overused, almost worse than Gus van Sant's young skaters.
This excess flattens the film, making it resemble a music video too much.
This also happens when he uses, more and more throughout the film, funky music, just like Tarantino, but without that surreal atmosphere characterizing the brass and fat bass in Tarantino’s movies.

Weak points also emerge regarding the protagonists, once again poor but good, as our heroes only miss breaking through a kitchen wall and concluding by eating pasta, and then they're set; not to mention the voiceover, with an old and ironic tone, used to introduce the characters at the beginning of the film, which sounds banal and rhetorical.
The actors’ performances are moderate: no one excels and no one is as terrible as the inappropriate Sting, who plays the father of one of the protagonists.
The rugged Vinnie Jones should be mentioned (who will reappear in a similarly characterized role in "The Snatch"), a rough soccer player making his film debut, and Jonson Stathman (a former athlete of the English diving team, participated in the Seoul Olympics in 1988) also discovered by Guy, who after this film will dedicate himself to indie Action movies.

Despite some beautiful scenes (the girl with the machine gun), and sometimes funny lines (even if the protagonists' need to be witty at all costs quickly becomes tiring) "I wouldn't want to approach and have an orangutan yank me in and rape me," says a puzzled Stathman pointing to a very exotic-looking cocktail, the first film by good Guy is a work that takes too much and gives very little, unfortunately.
"Lock & Stock" ends up being a simple adaptation, or rather a British variant of "Pulp Fiction", where the director uses his skills to steer all the story's events towards a situation ultimately favorable to the protagonists.
Thus emerges a paradoxical aspect, Guy gives his best as a director with genres that haven’t made him famous, "Sherlock Holmes" (though much credit also goes to Robert Downey), and not with those that stage the characters he loves most: clumsy criminals and small-time crooks.

But after all, you'll tell me "What did you expect from Madonna's husband?!".

Indeed, what did I expect?

* - or "You wish!"