BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Revolver by Guy Ritchie

  
 
matthew.
03:57 / 08.04.06
Now, the way I understand it, some people who live in England don't much care for Ritchie because he adopted a Cockney accent, dubbed a "Mockney" accent. I don't know if this is true. Among my friends, we think he's ace. Lock Stock... and Snatch. are fab-you-lus flicks. Fun popcorn munchers. Nothing else. I saw Snatch. twice in the theatre (this was when I was in high school).

Just saw Revolver and... fuck him and fuck that movie. So here's how I thought it was going for the first half an hour of the six-hour running time: "Oh yeah. This is going to be a big con, like in The Sting or Ocean's Twelve. A big con in which I'll get all excited and shocked!" and "That Jason Statham is so hardcore with his gambling and his mustache!"

Half an hour after that, here's my thoughts: "What the fuck is going on? Uh, waiter, I didn't ask for overly complicated allegory in my soup!"

Go on IMDB's board and you'll see people arguing back and forth over the implicit and subtle meanings of the plot. Here's my two cents: no matter how you put it, Revolver is one of the most pretentious and incomprehensible films ever. Ever. One cannot successfully reconcile the entire plot in a sensible and complete manner. No matter what one argues, I will say, "That doesn't make sense in relation to this." Everything cannot be explained away by "Oh, but he's really just manipulating him, you see?" NO, fuck that.

Revolver made me think of Lynch's films. The saving grace in Lynch's films is that there is a myriad of successful solutions to the puzzle. For example, Mulholland Drive has a few different intrepretations that make sense, that work equally, but are mutually exclusive. Revolver on the other hand, has answers that never sync up, never resolve. Or, better yet, the incomprehensibility of Donnie Darko or Primer works much better than this haberdashery of convoluted metaphors.

There is no ending. There is no character arc or development. There is no "OMG" factor (like the end of The Usual Suspects). There is only moments where Jason Statham's characters wonders about the reality of his situation. It's an existensial metaphysical crime thriller with a heavyhanded and possibly Kabbalah-infused allegory.

I read quite often on the IMDB boards that people who don't like this film simply "don't get it". I disagree; there's nothing to get. It's intellectual wanking that
just
doesn't
work.

So fuck this flick.
 
 
Benny the Ball
21:39 / 08.04.06
With a better actor than Statham and a lot less clunky voice over it would have been an interesting film. It was severely let down by the clash of style and over the topness and the dirty mockney sense of bad actors playing hard men. But still, I think films like this should be made, with no sense of marketability, if only to push the idea that it's just film, it's a type of art, people should be allowed to play with ideas and not everything has to be a money spinner.
 
 
matthew.
23:18 / 08.04.06
Erm. Quite. I look back over my opening post and see some juvenile thoughts. Ha. Ha. Anyway, I agree with you, Mr Ball, that not all flicks have to be marketable, that some take the same old ideas (heist/con) and translate them to film in a new and interesting way. It's a shame, however, that Ritchie got arrogant enough to believe the fans will justify or reconcile anything in order to commend its brilliance.
 
 
PatrickMM
19:00 / 12.04.06
I'm surprised this hasn't gotten US distribution, considering that both Snatch and Lock Stock were pretty big cult hits. I suppose the lack of Brad Pitt might hurt, but if they made a Transporter 2, there would seem to be at least some Statham demand.

Reading the thread, I'm actually intrigued to see the film. I assumed it was just another by the numbers crime film, but if it's as nonsensical as it's being described here, it sounds like it's worth at least one viewing.

There seems to be a trend towards increasingly narrativeless, almost avant garde action films. This can be bad, as in the case of something like Underworld: Evolution, or it can be great, as in the case of the pop masterpiece, Domino. What Domino did was maximize the things you'd want from the action genre without worrying about servicing a credible plot. It was all about the visual moments, and I'd consider it an art film more than a traditional Hollywood movie.

Are audiences so desensitized that they can't take an action films, where every scene isn't action? Or is this just an example of studios who have lost touch with their storytelling abilities and are trying to cram a movie with a bunch of cool visuals they can use for the trailer?
 
 
matthew.
19:17 / 12.04.06
Well, there are many cool visuals in the film, as well as two spectacular gunfights, one at the beginning, and one at the beginning of the third act (or end of second act).

It probably is worth viewing at least once, I think. It has its merits in that at least Ritchie didn't do a by-the-numbers crime flick (although I'd argue he has never done a regular old crime flick).
 
 
pony
02:45 / 31.01.08
So this has finally opened in the US. The overwhelming majority of stateside reviews are panning it in a way that I've seldom seen before, but I'm still sort of curious to see it. I'm having a hard time justifying $10 theater tickets vs. pirating it, so I wanted to ask the UK folk that have had time to digest the movie: Is this in any way worth my money? Are the imdb posters saying that the negative critics "just don't get it" simply being pretentious?
 
 
Mark Parsons
23:01 / 31.01.08
I read the script ages ago and I understood the general thematic and spiritual gist of it. Alas, it was all pretty standard stuff, esp if you're even slightly familiar with RAW, Invisibles, Gnosticism, etc. It all felt slightly half-assed, IMO.
 
 
Paralis
00:00 / 01.02.08
I'm sorry I don't have a more detailed response for this thread--I watched the film in 2005 or early 2006. I downloaded it as soon as I could after reading the horrible reviews. There's an instinctive urge, particularly after enjoying Lock, Stock and Snatch, to believe that the critics are melodramatic, that Revolver has some remote beauty (and is perhaps destined on some level to be a cult favorite). A mon avis, they're not, and Revolver doesn't. It is an overbearingly earnest mess of a film.

But the way I prefer to think of it is that each of Guy Ritchie's films have been worse than its predecessor (I'm only counting Lock Stock, Snatch, Swept Away and Revolver here). If things proceed linearly--that is to say, if RockNRolla is as much worse than Revolver as Revolver is worse than Swept Away is worse than Snatch, it will quite literally kill someone. Beware.
 
 
Gypsy Lantern
08:14 / 01.02.08
Revolver is exactly like having a terrifyingly coked-up Guy Ritchie trying to explain his insights into Kabbalah to you, using his preferred medium of the half-baked gangster movie. While Andre 3000 and Uncle Pussy from the Sopranos stand around looking increasingly sceptical about the trajectory of the film they have got themselves involved in. It's inane beyond credibility, but very funny for those reasons.

I don't know anybody else who has seen it, so I've had to live with it by myself for years now. Apparently it's even funnier with the director's commentary on, but I'm not sure I could deal with it again.
 
  
Add Your Reply