Revolver (DVD)

Jason Statham plays a gambler drawn into a web of con tricks as he tries to get revenge on crime boss Ray Liotta. A tangled mixture of action thriller and art movie, from Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels director Guy Ritchie
We know exactly where it all went wrong for Guy Ritchie; the question is how and why? Back in 1997, he smashed his way onto cinema screens with one of the most energetic British movies in years; his Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels heralded the arrival of a major talent. Even the derivative nature of Snatch, his 2000 follow-up, and the growing list of sub-standard mockney gangster films that his success spawned did not tarnish his growing reputation. But then came Swept Away (2002). Making a film with new wife Madonna turned out to be a monumentally bad decision as critics derided it and poor tickets sales across the pond resulted in the indignity of a straight-to-video release in the UK.

It took three years for Ritchie to get back to the director's chair, but what briefly looked like a potential return to form has backfired in genuinely spectacular fashion. Revolver has familiar ingredients from Lock Stock and Snatch, with its lurid mix of con artists, crime lords, and heavily stylised violence, but anyone expecting another fast-moving romp will be disappointed. Ritchie wants to be taken seriously as an artist and the result is the most mind-bogglingly pretentious action thriller ever made.

Starting off with quotes from Julius Caesar, Nicolas Machiavelli and the fundamentals of chess (which are then repeated at regular intervals throughout), the story begins when gambler Jake Green (Statham) decides to get revenge on crime boss Dorothy Macha (Liotta) for the seven years he spent in a solitary jail cell. Macha responds by putting out a hit on Jake, but events abruptly shift into bizarre territory, as Jake finds himself being saved by a pair of enigmatic loan sharks (Pastore and Benjamin). He then discovers he's suffering from a rare blood disease that will kill him in three days and is soon being extorted as well as protected by his new "friends" who set out to wage a campaign of sabotage against Macha.

It soon becomes apparent that Jake is caught up in a gigantic con involving drugs, Asian mobsters, and the seemingly omnipotent crime overlord Sam Gold - but the con becomes so overcomplicated it seems doubtful that even Ritchie knows who is conning who. What seems far more important to the director is loading the film with bizarre Kabballah-related symbolism. He pitches the drama almost as a set of rules to be followed - a guide to confronting your inner demons and finding the secret meaning of existence.

This is a huge step away from the crime capers and comedy violence of his first two movies and, while Ritchie should be applauded for ambition, he doesn't have the storytelling ability to pull it off. Instead, the film is suffocated by an overwhelming sense of its own importance and turns into a self-indulgent ordeal, with scene after scene of characters exchanging portentous dialogue like "Macha has unleashed his legions", and "Why should a man do what he doesn't want to do?"

This chin-stroking seriousness is hard enough to cope with in the first half of the movie, but amazingly, things get even worse in a bewildering second half. It peaks with a near unwatchable scene where Statham, trapped in a lift, confronts the darker side of his nature in a five-minute, bizarrely edited rant.