RocknRolla.

"Guy Ritchie reshuffles a worn-out deck in RocknRolla, a return to the shady stylings that characterized his earlier flicks Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "The on-screen names have changed, and the edited rhythms have been somewhat slowed, but more or less everything else follows formula: pump up the volume, tilt the camera, flex the muscle, strut the stuff, bang bang, blah blah."

Updated through 10/12.

"Alas, Guy Ritchie seems to have lost even what little touch he once had, his latest a typically convoluted saga about strangely named big- and little-time crooks that's fatally deficient in verve," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "Ritchie's plotting is so perfunctorily intricate and his characters so doggedly vapid - to call them cartoonish would be apt, though more than a little insulting to cartoons - that they all come off as interchangeable foul-mouthed cardboard cutouts striking routine funny-vile poses."

"What do you have to do to get your career revoked in England, short of being Gary Glitter?" wonders Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "Sum total of scenes that deserved to stay in the final cut: Thandie Newton doing a little shimmying frug."

"Ritchie dials down the pace, soaking up the atmosphere of sweat and stale beer around a revolving cast of low-level thugs and underworld operators," writes Sam Adams in the Los Angeles Times. "Ritchie whisks you along on a whirlwind tour, but he's not averse to putting on the brakes long enough to admire some of his favorite attractions.... Although it never strays into self-parody, RocknRolla occasionally pokes fun at its director's fondness for macho chest-beating."

"Mr Madonna's fifth feature - and his fourth devoted to the East End underworld - strives to capture the corporate feel of new millennial Britannia," writes Benjamin Strong in the L Magazine. "The thing is, Ritchie's showy style hasn't changed, and for better or for worse RocknRolla is pure 1990s."

Alonso Duralde, writing at MSNBC, finds that "Ritchie brings enough flash and silliness to the proceedings to make it a fun, if exhausting, ride."

Earlier: Reviews from Toronto and the UK.

Updates, 10/9: "It's like a lumpy, overworked, useless objet that someone who doesn't know you very well might give you as a gift, a thing that sits around the house serving no unearthly purpose other than reminding you, none too subtly, that it's completely hollow," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "I love a shallow, stylish exercise as much as the next guy. But I'm not sure Ritchie's particular brand of slice-and-dice storytelling can even be called a style. It's more like an applied technique - a way for a filmmaker to show off what he's learned to do without actually having to do anything."

Michael Ordoña profiles Mark Strong for the Los Angeles Times.

"Guy Ritchie didn't make the mistake of putting his wife Madonna in RocknRolla; but his latest gangster film queers a sense of Macho to match Madonna's sense of Slut," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Hopefully, Ritchie's fantasy won't roll back human progress; but this time it's shaped an unexpectedly enjoyable movie."

Updates, 10/10: "As usual, Ritchie is preoccupied with the various strata of colorful underworld denizens," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club, "but this time there's an element of social criticism in his vision of a world where the leaders proceed out of a combination of ignorance and arrogance, and wind up spiting themselves. But as is the norm for Ritchie, RocknRolla is also too long, too coolly violent, and too populated by characters who all talk like they've been reading the same pulp novelist."

"It's certainly not mature or sophisticated, but it does have a slight sadness and a vulnerability that makes the lightheartedness seem bittersweet," writes Stephen Garrett in Time Out New York. "[T]he film's hint of a sequel (and Ritchie's continuing career) actually feel somewhat inviting."

Update, 10/12: Choire Sicha talks with Idris Elba for the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at October 8, 2008 1:10 PM