First of all, what's with this name? There’s the lock,
which is something you must never ignore since this ain't Ram-Rajya anymore;
the stock, which is a stash of coke and loadsa cash; and then the
two smoking barrels, which are worth £700 a piece. Maybe more!
This movie had been on my radar for many years now. But the
thought of a British movie, that too with an offbeat treatment, made by some
unknown chaps, with a title I couldn't fathom? Naah! Somehow it didn’t seem
right to pay Rs.10 for that VCD. Right? Wrong! There are
times when one wishes they were born in the USA. When you see a movie like this
one and realize what you have been missing,
that is one of those times.
Somehow the really good movies, whether from Hollywood or Filmistan, never get splattered on theatre
screens in India.
A late late night “crème de la crème” show is what a lucky few may get. For the
rest, they are either ignored or banned. Thank God for friends and their DVD
collections! Happened to pop this into a friend’s DVD player on a lazy Sunday
afternoon. With nothing better to do, and near-zero expectations, we were planning
to sit-through the film even with its crowd of characters and mélange of
dialects. What I didn’t count on was skipping
lunch as I stared transfixed at the screen while my cell-phone bleeped like a
newborn baby. Nothing except the end of the movie could bring me back to India. Returned
after 2 hours plus in the alleys of London—dazed
and blown-away! Bloody good, I say!
The story of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is
just your average Priyadarshan comedy. I am surprised it hasn’t been “adapted”
thus far by Abbas-Mastan (or maybe apna Ramu’s Factory?). Especially
surprising, considering it has Indian roots in terms of Swraj Paul’s son
financing the movie or some such. Anyway, point is, the plot is very simple,
masala stuff. It starts by introducing 4 young lads in various states of
criminal degradation. Much in the style of our Kaante or, for the
purists-- Tarantino. To put it simply, the film is a story of ambition,
greed, betrayal, revenge and foolhardy luck. Where it rocks the boat is in the
acting, editing, background score and, yup, the dialects/dialogues. Of course,
it is impossible without DVD Subtitles.British angrezi and humour is better read than heard.
American reviewers have called it a British answer to “Pulp
Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs”. In the same breath, they ask us to wait for the
Tom Cruise remake. Personally, I attribute that to their stars-n-striped vision
of the world, rather than any valid critique of cinema. While the genre may be
similar, I kind of enjoyed this one a whole lot more.
So then, these young lads get into a gambling debt. One of
the chappies (Moran) has the eyes of an eagle and the intuition of a hyena when
it comes to decoding a poker face. He enters an underground den to battle an
old adversary. The stakes are high, but so is the payoff. His friends wait in
the bar next-door while Mr.Incredible baits Harry with their money. Then the
plot enters Mahabharata-era and our heroes end up as Draupadi, with no Krishna around. They have one week to cough up
half-a-million pounds or lose a finger for every day of delay. As they ponder
their dwindling existence, the wafer thin walls of modern dwellings come to
their rescue. A bunch of goons happen to live next-door, you see. They overhear
a plot to relieve some scumbags of their drug money. So while the goons plan to
pull one over another bunch of young lads, our lads plot to relieve the
relievers of the victor’s loot. If this review is going round in circles, wait
till you see the movie!
The rest of the movie is about these various sub-plots
converging into one hell of a climax. It is like those cartoons where a
bumbling Goofy enters an old shack and it collapses all around him-- leaving
him unscathed. Whether our gang of goofy Brit-boys manage to stay unscathed...
well... the movie will tell. Old-timers will relish the cameo by singer Sting as Moran’s father. Watch this
movie then, for sheer maar-dhaad and STYLE!
