Directed by Guy Ritchie, and after a number of poor efforts, and I’m thinking about the mind boggling ‘Revolver’, and its abysmal predecessor (starring his then wife Madonna) ‘Swept Away’, we have another ‘mockney’ gangster film with a twist. Is it worth the effort, or just another spin on old ground?

The cast is pretty low key for sure, Gemma Arterton and the delicately delicious Thandie Newton are about the best known from the assembled cast, whilst old heads played by Gerard Butler, Geoff Bell and Tom Wilkinson play the only others that will probably be recognisable to mainstream viewers. That said, there are movies where this has been a massive plus, and in some ways the humour and downbeat backstreet theme in this does it no harm, but it does lack that punch that even a now Hollywood second tier actor, Jason Statham, brought to the previous Ritchie efforts.

The plot then….well, where to begin, the usual Ritchie shenanigans here in terms of convoluting things to the nth degree, so much so that it would probably take me longer to explain the plot than it would for you to watch the movie, so I won’t. Instead I will say that what features are two levels of criminal, the upper echelons featuring Lenny as the boss, and Archie (whose perspective is used to narrate the proceedings) as his fixer, and the ‘Wild Bunch’ who are a ‘street gang’ whose members include ‘One Two’, ‘Mumbles’, and ‘Handsome Bob’ . Add to the mix a Russian Mafia come billionaire property developer who resembles a certain Chelsea owner, corruption in local government, shotguns, handguns, machetes, and heists, all held together by Ritchie’s stylish set pieces and a happening soundtrack. With an abundance of characters trying to outdo each other in the mean stakes and sub plots to drown in, this movie rambles a little more than it should. It is however sharp and has plenty of humour between the hardass scenes, with an undercurrent of gritty realism for those who like their underworld ‘mockney’.

6.0/10 A return to form of sorts for Ritchie, whose biggest flaw is that he seems to be trying to recreate ‘Lock. Stock’ on another level and needs to remove some of the complexity from his films, to give them a little more pace and less face. For me the two hour running time was a bit too long, it would have sat better at 90-100 minutes and should have closed out with more panache. Why the RocknRolla even gets a mention is puzzling, because he is hardly in the movie until near the end, and even then it seems to set him up for a sequel.