Pages tagged “guy ritchie”

Release Date: Oct. 31
Director/Writer: Guy Ritchie
Cinematographer: David Higgs
Starring: Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Strong
Studio/Run Time: 
Warner Bros., 117 mins.

British gangsters deliver popcorn violence in quirky heist film

A decade ago, Guy Ritchie became the new British icon of pop violence with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. His visual assault of gunfire camera cuts and cockney one-liners made him the international competition to Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avery’s exploitation renaissance. After the combined disappointment of Swept Away and Revolver, Ritchie returns to form with RocknRolla, a hyper-stylized crime ensemble with just enough bombast for a modest career resurrection. The film stars Tom Wilkinson as Lenny Cole, a traditional gangster whose real-estate monopoly is pursued by an Eastern Bloc crime lord (Karel Roden) and a troupe of modern opportunists led by One Two (Gerard Butler). A boring exposition and clichéd archetypes trail into colorful bits of hilarity, including a homoerotic subplot among two criminals and an exaggerated chase sequence that finds Butler squaring off against two Russian war criminals. Ritchie continues to riff on the plot he wrote years ago, but has finally learned how to improvise in new and refreshing directions.

Watch the trailer for RockNRolla:

Drum roll please, dear Watson. The newest actor to take on the Sherlock Holmes role is none other than the Iron Man, Robert Downey Jr., in Guy Ritchie’s new Sherlock Holmes flick. 

Nothing has been confirmed as of yet, but EW.com reports that Robert Downey Jr. is in the running to play the famed sleuth Sherlock Holmes in Guy Ritchie's Warner Brothers' film. 

Now that Neil Marshall is off the project, Guy Ritchie is on board to write and direct Warner Bros’ reincarnation of the story of Sherlock Holmes. Attempting the same kind of cinematic realism as other Warner blockbusters such as Batman Begins, Ritchie intends on tapping into the more nuanced qualities of Holmes’ character, highlighting his adventurousness and impeccable fighting abilities.