Toronto and the UK. RocknRolla.

"Though it's likely to be hailed as a partial return to form after the disastrous reception accorded to Revolver and Swept Away, RocknRolla seems unlikely to refloat Guy Ritchie's reputation back to the levels he enjoyed after Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000)," writes Neil Young. "It's a predictably slick, glossy, flashy thriller - with comic overtones - set in present-day London (touted as the imminent 'financial and cultural capital of the world') competently but unexcitingly recycles ideas and scenes long-familiar from a sub-genre that dates back to The Long Good Friday."

"With its cheeky wit, non-PC provocations, cock-eyed class-consciousness and cheerful irreverence it could be the closest thing to Ealing comedy we’re offered these days," offers Wally Hammond in Time Out.

Updated through 9/8.

"Don't expect any new tricks," warns Tim Robey in the Telegraph. "Every character will still be introduced with a trademark flourish, lest our attention wander for a second. There will be an aggressive voiceover hinting at grand schemes gone haywire: this time it's a five-minute disquisition on hedge funds and London's property boom, which is so tragically 2007 (and tedious) you half expect a cameo from Tony Blair. Random outbursts of violence will be accompanied by a deafening increase in soundtrack volume. Without all the noise, you might be aware of half the audience snoozing.... What, though, is a rocknrolla?"

"That title of Mr Guy Ritchie's new featcha. Means geeza. Or mobsta. Top bruisa. In his London manna. Sad to say, the film's a shocka. A right depressa. Bit of a dispirita. For this directa, it ain't exactly a departcha." The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw turns in another one of those one-star reviews he's known for.

"Ritchie is handy with the whiplash editing that makes fast-cutting almost subliminal, and his three-second sex scene between Gerard Butler and Thandie Newton - a neat montage of groans, swoons and zips - made me laugh," admits the Independent's Anthony Quinn. "But his writing skills just aren't up to scratch, evidenced in set-piece monologues of inexcusable banality. His fortitude under critical flak is admirable, and his self-confidence unbelievable, but RocknRolla is the same old shaggy-dog story with a slightly different variety fleas."

"Tom Wilkinson plays Lenny with wonderful comic venom," concedes James Christopher in the London Times. "But there is no disguising that he is a standard-issue villain in an absurd Guy Ritchie thriller."

Writing in Variety, Joe Leydon, who's caught the film in Toronto, where it screens this morning and next Saturday, calls RocknRolla "a cleverly constructed, sensationally stylish and often darkly hilarious seriocomic caper. Marginally more restrained than his attention-grabbing breakthrough efforts... his new pic proves just as aggressively exciting while zigzagging through an intricate maze of plots and counterplots, dirty deals and double-crosses."

"The film is heavily indebted to Trainspotting, plus the entire works of Scorsese and Tarantino," writes Charlotte O'Sullivan in the Evening Standard. "To describe the violence as cartoonish is an insult to cartoons."

Update: "In the same way east Germans nostalgically recall the good old days of the Iron Curtain, I've been wondering recently if Guy Ritchie's movies were really as bad as all that," blogs Steve Rose in the Guardian. "I was prejudiced against him, as are many others out there. Not without reason, but he's an easy target, what with his gossip-friendly marriage, his mockney airs, his lad-mag values and most of all, his success. He's been mercilessly, albeit amusingly, sent up by the likes of Adam and Joe, Harry Enfield, The Fast Show, you name it, and yes, his films have many, many deficiencies, but I'm going to come out and say it: he's not without his qualities as a filmmaker."

Todd Brown at Twitch: "Though RocknRolla never quite reaches the same giddy heights that both Lock Stock and Snatch hit in their key moments it certainly isn't for lack of trying and, on the flip side, RocknRolla is a far more confident and self-assured film than either of its predecessors. So while the peaks may not be as high the valleys certainly aren't as deep, either, the end result being a film that ends up ranking somewhere between Ritchie's debut and sophomore effort. And that ain't a bad place to be at all."

Update, 9/8: "At least in Lock, Stock..., the audience wanted the likable geezers to escape a gangland beating," writes the Observer's Jason Solomons. "Here, there's no humour and no sympathetic characters in a black hole of tedium, outmoded, flashy camera moves, yobbishness and mockney nonsense. Most distastefully, the work is riddled with issues about gayness, public schools and immigrants, with no directorial distance or judgment implied."

Posted by dwhudson at September 5, 2008 1:47 AM