RocknRolla
by Nick PinkertonAfter a box-office-catastrophic two-movie run, Guy Ritchie takes another mulligan and returns to "form." A new pack of capering yobs, including a Pete Doherty–esque crackhead savant, run off with one another's loot, their various storylines cut together and the scenes temporally shuffled with enough sleight-of-editing to keep up a semblance of kineticism. Brick-shithouse-built rough boys are given "unexpected colors," such as a taste for Merchant-Ivory films. Digressive soliloquies casually linger on such ephemera as American crayfish and the semiotics of a pack of cigarettes, belying looming violence. Why should a movie so titled have one of the most indifferent soundtracks in recent memory? Sum total of scenes that deserved to stay in the final cut: Thandie Newton doing a little shimmying frug.
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