Would it be unprofessional of me to admit that I zoned out
about a half a dozen times during the press screening of Guy
Ritchie’s RocknRolla? Would it disqualify me from
reviewing the film because I didn’t cling to every single frame
of the film with undivided attention?
I’m making the above two
admissions. If you think my opinion of the film is bogus because
of them, then stop reading now. I’m going to review
RocknRolla because I think my reaction to it is as valid as
any other. Sure, I may not have picked up on every plot-element
of the picture as I dazed off into La-La Land due to my sheer
apathy towards the material, but I sat through the whole thing
and, for that painful experience, I sure as hell should be able
to write about it. In other words, I see the need to warn
potential ticket-buyers—$10 is on the line here, $20 if it’s a
date—that they may indeed find themselves as bored to tears with
the picture as I was. I may not have digested every aspect of
RocknRolla, but I got more than my proper fill.
I should tell you about the
plot—yes, I stayed with RocknRolla long enough to be able
to explain the set-up in a coherent manner, although in
retrospect I wish I hadn’t—but I don’t want the synopsis to
entice you if British crime movies are your thing. Ritchie ain’t
no Danny Boyle. I would make mention the characters instead, but
that would require telling you about the actors, who all do fine
jobs in their roles and collectively represent a knock-out cast.
Nonetheless, they do not save the dead-on-arrival RocknRolla
one bit, and I don’t want you to think that they do.
This was my first Ritchie film, so
I don’t really feel qualified to comment on how it stacks up
against the rest. I will say that if their reputation for being
incoherent, hyper-stylized bore-fests that contain unhealthy
amounts of edits is accurate and deserved, than RocknRolla
is right at home in the Ritchie arsenal. And that was exactly my
problem with the film: I felt like it was beating me senseless
after only about twenty minutes of watching it. Sure, there were
some good performances and some cleverly-framed shots, but I
didn’t care because they were lost in a rough of stylized
emptiness. Ritchie gave me no reason to care about what happened
in his film. The characters and plot exist just so their
writer/director has an excuse to engage his own A.D.D.
tendencies. Because the viewer has no reason to care about these
elements, said viewer also has no reason to put a vested
interest in what happens in the film. The cycle that results is
miserable: boredom sets in, the viewer zones out, and because
the film is so chock-full of plot for every one of its 114
minutes the viewer then loses touch with what’s going on. This
process repeats itself and film in turn gets even more boring
when the viewer is left without a comprehendible story to
follow.
Had I seen RocknRolla under
normal circumstances in a multiplex without having promised the
studio a review, I probably would’ve walked out. This is not by
a long-shot the worst film I have ever seen, but it may be the
most apathy-inducing. Normally I’d get angry if I missed a plot
element due to my own careless zoning-out, but here I felt happy
this gave me reason to zone-out some more.
Four days after seeing
RocknRolla, I mostly—as you can glean—recall only the sense
of irritated ambivalence the film provoked in me. But I also
remember a few small fragments of good that I was able to take
notice of once I had accepted that the dizzying plot had lost
me. There’s a quiet scene in which two thugs discuss their
battle-bruises competitively before a loud moment of action
perfectly juxtaposes two tones. There’s a scene in a club with a
focal character’s band playing that is beautifully-shot and not
schizophrenic like a lot of the rest of the movie. And there are
some great moments involving the always-reliable Tom Wilkinson’s
piggish, extortionist crime-boss, even if they’re often
overshadowed by Ritchie’s frequent overindulgences. But these
are only mere moments. While they might signal that Ritchie may
one day make a good film—for all I know, perhaps he already has,
unlikely as it might seem—they only go to highlight just how
obnoxious, uninteresting, and unnecessary the whole of
RocknRolla is by comparison. To put it bluntly, the film
blows.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 10.5.2008
Screened on: 10.2.2008 in Screening Room 5 at the WB Lot
in Burbank, CA.