Sorry for the lack of posts. Been very busy with writing and some personal stuff (which thankfully is outside the scope of this blog). Loads of back-posting to come. That said...
There are some directors who keep making the same movie over and over again, with diminishing results. Wes Anderson and M. Night Shymalan come to mind. Guy Ritchie is another. I loved LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and really enjoyed SNATCH (mostly because of Brad Pitt’s crazy accent).
SPOILERS, LIKE BAD TEETH, ABOUND
ROCK’N’ROLLA is yet another crazy caper film with a cast of dozens. Only this film has serious flaws in it. One, the voiceover from Archy (and from other characters later in the film) often just describes what’s going on onscreen. This is the worst use of voiceover ever; if we’re seeing something, we don’t need to hear about it too. Voiceover should add something – a hint of irony, a lie, some character details.
Next, Ritchie sucks all the tension out of the story with some truly odd choices. Like SNATCH and LSATSB, he paints his lead characters into a corner – they owe $2m to Tom Wilkinson’s sleazy gangster. But they immediately get out of their situation by robbing a Russian billionaire's accountants of $7m; in perhaps the easiest robbery of all time. This is a really dumb choice for the story – without that threat hanging over their heads, there’s nothing at stake. Even odder, the Russian doesn’t seem that mad that he was ripped off. He doesn’t do anything about it until the second time he’s robbed. So without the threat of imminent death for our heroes, the only thing attempting to drive the story is Tom Wilkinson trying to recover the Russian’s lucky painting from his drugged-out stepson.
There are too many characters and we’re not invested in any of them. Gerard Butler and Idris Elba are fine, but there’s no reason we’re rooting for them. There’s also Jeremy Piven and Ludacris, playing managers/club owners who are going to lose business if they don’t track down the junkie. But that’s not something that makes us care about them; they’re two more people in a cast of dozens; does it really matter if they take a hit because their club gets shut down? It’s only until very late in the film that their lives become at stake.
Finally, there are some weak character moments that feel completely out of place. Would a ruthless Russian billionaire really let himself be robbed of $7m without any repercussions? Wouldn’t he at least try to find out who stole from him? Perhaps he’d ask Tom Wilkinson for help? And when the Russian turns on Tom Wilkinson – whom we know is insanely vindictive – wouldn’t Wilkinson try to have the man hurt or killed in return?
In order for these types of character-driven, plot-twisting heist films to work, we have to care about the characters and believe that what they’re doing comes out of who they are. ROCK’N’ROLLA fails on both counts, leaving us with a music video instead of a film – all flash, no substance.