Review of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) by Konstantinos R — 01 Sep 2014

Clever, Tarantino-esque movie about a scattered group of criminals who get into deep trouble with a notorious mobster and come up with risky plan to get out of it.

The buildup and character development leading up to the climax is nothing special. The humor often serves to lighten the mood and keep the story flowing, but it's nothing uproariously funny. I never really felt like I got attached to any of the characters, colorful as they were. But all of these factors were only minor nuisances compared to the true artistry that is the cleverness and intricacy of the plot. Many different stories occur at the same time but around the same sort of events such that they all seem related to the story, but in the end, everything all of a sudden independently splits and then comes together into a very well-thought-out climax. The complexity of the story at the end is not exceedingly complicated such that it is difficult to follow, but it is complicated enough to be worthy of praise for its mastery of construction.

It did have sort of a hokey Reservoir Dogs feel to it, and the similarities to Taratino--with the dark humor, gory fights, and strange characters--were palpable. And while it did have its problems with overall coherence of character development, humor, and plot, the cleverness of the story leaves me with an overall feeling of admiration toward this quirky crime drama.