RocknRolla

RocknRolla is a fun movie. I guess the plot is sort of original, but it mainly gets by on the likeability of the characters.

I guess I can officially say I like Guy Ritchie's stuff. The Man from U.N.C.L.E was great, and I liked Sherlock Holmes and Snatch (although I no longer remember the latter). RocknRolla really pulls you in. It's engaging right from the start, and the characters are all likeable. It's interesting how little Mumbles and One Two want to hurt people, considering their line of work.

As seems to be the case these days, I felt like I couldn't hear half the dialogue, and the accents didn't help. But I managed to get the general idea. I didn't like Thandie's performance at all for some reason. I guess Stella wound up dying at the end. I didn't really understand her motivation. Archy (weird that it's not spelled Archie) said she was bored. It's not like she needed the 10% cut; she already had plenty of money. Just the excitement of screwing over the Uri I guess.

 It seemed like they were onto her after the first time, so I don't know how she found out about the second time, especially since they made it seem like only Lenny knew. That dance scene between Stella and One Two was pretty hilarious, though.

I started to suspect about halfway through that we weren't ever going to find out what the painting was of. I think there was a time when that would've driven me nuts, but now I kind of like it. It's better left to your imagination. Anything it could've been would've been disappointing.

Uri didn't know what the heck was going on in life. It was really weird that he proposed to Stella. It was also weird that Lenny was so afraid of him and Archy was able to take him out after he got rid of Lenny. Maybe he just started running things differently. Lenny didn't seem to be employing very effective muscle.

Jeremy Piven and Ludacris was good. It was pretty hardcore when they were looking for Johnny and he was right outside the club. I did enjoy Ritchie's shooting style, and the editing in general. The chase scene between Mumbles, One Two, and the Russians was great. I loved the rock music they used for that and a couple other scenes.

The gun lighter Johnny kept using was cool. I liked Johnny in general. It was a great plot device having the junkies steal his painting. It was cool how the painting wound up moving around in general.