True Brit: Ritchie returns

Madonna8217;s husband is back in business with a British gangster movie, his cinematic forte

Madonna8217;s husband is back in business with a British gangster movie, his cinematic forte
Like many English pubs, the Punch Bowl carries quite a history. The Mayfair drinking establishment first started serving ale in the middle of the 18th century, when King George II ruled. Like some pockets of London, though, the two-story tavern turned into a grimy relic of a forgotten era8212;the janitor did the pub8217;s cooking and the beer was as uninspiring as the ambience.

And then filmmaker Guy Ritchie bought the place. The pub8217;s scary meat pies have since been pushed aside by organic smoked salmon, and authentic, hand-pulled British pints have replaced the modern, soulless lagers.

8220;I love pubs, I love pubs,8221; Ritchie said during a recent visit to his bar as the refurbishment of the Punch Bowl was just beginning. 8220;Pubs just happen to be one of those institutions that are just quintessentially English, and four pubs a day shut down in the U.K.8221;

The Punch Bowl isn8217;t Ritchie8217;s only restoration project. The 39-year-old writer and director is also trying to breathe life into his own filmmaking career. After a commercial and critical slump that included Revolver and the remake Swept Away which starred his wife, Madonna, Ritchie, with his new movie, RocknRolla, is returning to the genre that established his cinematic identity: the British gangster movie.

In 1998, Ritchie and producing partner Matthew Vaughn made Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a low-budget London crime caper that overflowed with kinetic visuals, colourful dialogue and distinctive heavies. The drama grossed more than 100 million worldwide, and two years later Ritchie and Vaughn collaborated on Snatch, which helped to further Ritchie8217;s subspecies of stylishly violent British crime stories; similar efforts included Vaughn8217;s Layer Cake and Paul McGuigan8217;s Gangster No. 1.

But while Ritchie8217;s honour-among-thieves movies always had exhibited a complex mix of attitude, nihilism and convoluted plotting, the combination proved caustic to 20058217;s Revolver, which was drubbed by critics and ignored by moviegoers. Even Gerard Butler, who stars in RocknRolla, admits he didn8217;t see it.

8220;I think it8217;s impossible for a movie like that to do well. It8217;s an inaccessible concept,8221; Ritchie said in a postmortem of his movie about revenge, self-doubt and philosophy, 8220;because it8217;s about the idea that there is essentially no such thing as an external enemy, that ultimately you are the enemy.8221;

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He began developing a remake of The Dirty Dozen with Matrix producer Joel Silver, while also sending his RocknRolla script to Silver and producing partner Susan Downey, who said of RocknRolla, 8220;It8217;s a return to form and an advancement of form.8221;
Downey and Silver will produce Ritchie8217;s first American studio film, next year8217;s Sherlock Holmes, which stars Downey8217;s husband, Robert Downey Jr.

Like Ritchie8217;s best work, RocknRolla is filled with memorably duplicitous characters: a deceitful accountant Thandie Newton, an equal-opportunity thug Butler, a strung-out but savvy rock star Toby Kebbell, a double-dealing crime boss Lenny Cole Tom Wilkinson and his not altogether loyal aide-de-camp, Archie Mark Strong.

The setting is low-rent thuggery although the film is largely free of Ritchie8217;s sometimes explicit violence, but the impetus is immigration and London8217;s rapidly evolving cultural and financial mix. Billionaire Russians are behind a suspicious land deal, and Lenny believes he can line his own pockets along the way.

Lenny also thinks he can still run the town, but the Russians have more pull. 8220;He8217;s desperately trying to retain his position,8221; said Ritchie, who has also been working on a documentary about what he calls 8220;the esoteric aspects of religion8221;.
_John Horn, LATWP