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.