t the turn of the millennium Guy Ritchie was considered one of the most vibrant and exciting voices in contemporary filmmaking. His low-budget crime debut Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels took the world by storm. It was an international success, launched the career of Crank star Jason Statham (for better or worse), got turned in BBC TV series, and was optioned by Tom Cruise for an American remake. Suddenly the British music video director with shady friends and a questionable past was a major Hollywood player.

He then followed Lock, Stock up with Snatch, which was essentially a remake of the goofy British gangster/comedy with a bigger budget and Brad Pitt. The movie was an instant success and the poster has been a fixture on college dorm room walls ever since. Flushed with success, Ritchie hooked up with Madonna and ever since he started sticking his penis in the material girl, Guy’s career has gone south. He tried to make a movie with his wife and the result was the unwatchable Swept Away. After that failure, Ritchie hoped that infusing one of his gangster flicks with undergrad philosophical musings would bring him back to the big time, but Revolver was a disaster and almost as hated as his previous movie. It looked like Ritchie might be forever known as Mr. Madonna and little else.

Ritchie is primed for a comeback and in an attempt to make himself relevant again, he’s gone back to his roots and made one of the stylish and cartoony gangster comedies that made his name. The result is RocknRolla, a movie that is unquestionably the best thing he’s made since Snatch, even if it is little more than a retread of the limited filmmaker’s former triumphs. Ritchie once again plunges into the depths of the London underworld, but this time he’s examining how foreign investors are changing the way the mob deals with their real estate money laundering schemes.

Or at least, I think that’s what he’s going for. That’s what Ritchie has been telling the press anyways. To be honest that issue is covered in the first 30 min of the movie and I guess it is supposed to be some sort of comment on the new foreign real estate influence on the English market place, but to be honest I wasn’t paying attention. All of the discussions about building sites and construction costs are boring will fly over the heads of most audiences. It’s merely the intellectual pretense that Ritchie thinks he needs to center the movie. But the film is not really about that. Like Lock, Stock and Snatch, the movie isn’t really about anything. It is just an excuse for Ritchie to create a group of funny and memorable crime characters and pit their disparate personalities against each other during a series of double-crosses and comedic capers.