Wednesday
25Jun2008
Movie Trailer - Can 'RockNRolla' Save Guy Ritchie's Career?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 11:18AM
I'm not one of those people who has undying belief in
the ability of directors, actors, and writers. Look, nobody in history has been
more prolific cranking out hits than Paul McCartney, but he's not writing
another "Yesterday" ever again. That ship has sailed. We won't be getting
something in five years everyone will compare to Sgt. Pepper.
It's the same principle in movies, and I subscribe to
the Missing Persons Theory of filmmaking. Let's say you're a great director, or
at least, you've directed a couple of really cool movies. The Missing Persons
Theory states that if we haven't heard from the director who makes really cool
movies in seven years (by which we mean, if you've made repulsive crap for seven
years or more), your career is officially dead. And I think your wife can
re-marry.
Who would this affect? Oh, a great many people. De
Palma, Coppola, Kevin Smith, John Woo, Barry Sonnenfeld, George Lucas, Joel
Schumacher, and yes,
Guy Ritchie.
Stop throwing things at your monitor for a second and
listen. Guy Ritchie has only made two good movies. If you had a quarterback on
your team and he played well in the first few games of the year but the other ten he was pretty
average if not lousy, wouldn't you think twice before signing him to a long-term
deal?
That's the boat Ritchie is in. To put it another way, why should I think his next movie's going to be great when his last few have been awful? Because he's Guy Ritchie? Nope. Can't accept that.
RockNRolla, you'd
think, would be his last stab at being the uber-cool director everyone thought
he was going to be. Maybe it will be great. If so, I won't stand corrected, because it still won't make anything he's done since 2001 worth a damn. If it fails, he'll probably have a very workmanlike career.
He's supposed to direct a Sherlock Holmes movie - and I have no idea how that
coupling makes sense - but first things first: He has to navigate RockNRolla to
critical and probably commercial success if he's going to get his career back on
track, if he is, in fact, going to come back from the dead.
Clearly, it appears that Guy Ritchie intends to remind
everyone that he directed Snatch and Lock, Stock... but at this point in his
career, we could just as easily say he's the director of Swept Away and
Revolver. But this looks like his British underground band of fun, so we'll hope
for the best while being aware of his worst.
RockNRolla comes out on Halloween.
Reader Comments (14)
When you mentioned "Coppola" you presumably meant Francis Ford, not Sofia...
Oh I tingle with hope, because how I would love another movie on par with snatch
Yes, the elder Coppola. It's been 30 years since Apocalypse Now...
it is worth noting that he has only made films based on his own scripts. plus he is a successful commercials director and has probably filmed dozens of adverts and promos that we've not heard about yet we know very well (not to mentioned the lock,stock TV series he exec produced)...sure, it doesn't constitute a 'film' but that is his background after all, so you cant fault him for carrying on doing the stuff that put food on the table in the first place. if he had taken on other peoples' scripts he would have probably made at the very least an extra 3 films, the perfect example would have been the matt vaughn directed 'layer cake' which was offered to ritchie first...
ritchie readily admits 'swept away' was a pile of poo and i do think that 'revolver' (another beatles reference?) is a great film, just incredibly misunderstood and he got alot of critical backlash for trying something different within the genre he resuscitated (how many imitations did lock stock spawn?)
if you're going to attack ritchie attack tarantino too; who really has only made 3 good films all within the same genre ('dogs, 'fiction, 'brown) despite making almost twice as many films as ritchie and even then he heavily and very obviously plagiarized scenes from superior works. no one in their right mind can possible call the kill bill films or death proof (grindhouse) any good & you can guarantee that the production costs of those films alone total up to probably 3 times as much of the cost of guy ritchie's entire filmography! the difference is that quentin just has a bigger profile than ritchie despite the fact that ritchie is just as talented, if not more so (at the very least technically - just look at the complexity of the photography and editing in his films and compare that to the bare bones style of a tarantino film)
so i very much disagree that his film making career is in the doldrums, rocknrolla should bring him back on track (after revolver he did mention he intended to go back and do something similar to what he made before) and i do think he will be ideal for a modern makeover of sherlock holmes.
OK...a lot to address here. First of all, bringing up that he's made commercials in a discussion about the quality and consistency of his filmmaking has no bearing on anything. He makes commercials. So? The BMW short film is the best thing he's done since Snatch but hell, Neil LaBute directs theater productions...didn't make The Wicker Man any easier to sit through.
Also, why turn down Layer Cake, which had a script that made some sense, to do Revolver, which, despite what you say, is just not a good film, certainly not in the same league as the two movies he's known for. It's just very, very messy, which can be fine but never great, and this didn't even hit that mark. Oh, it's showy, certainly, but doesn't exhibit the mark of a modern master anywhere within it.
And I'd like to see where I attacked him, exactly, since you brought it up. I just said he hasn't made a good film since 2001...and you may dispute that, but you'd be in the vast minority. Just calling it the way I see it: Director is praised for far too long based on a pair of very similar movies released nearly a decade ago. In other words, if he hasn't lost his ability, I'd have to see it first to believe it. Going back to the exact same format he's used before doesn't mean he's improved. It just means nothing else he's tried has worked.
Comparing Ritchie to Tarantino is a bit of a stretch. One guy reinvented the independent landscape, the other made a couple cool crime movies. You can't exactly overstate the relevance of Pulp Fiction. Death Proof, yes, is pure shit. I liked the two Kill Bill films and I think joining them into one movie would be disastrous, or close to it. Still, the Superman speech Carradine gives in Vol. 2 is better dialogue than Guy Ritchie has ever written and likely, has ever engaged in personally.
Does QT borrow very, very liberally? Oh yes. All the time. Does he steal? Yep. It's kind of his style, to incorporate familiar concepts and visuals from a world of different media. It's a kind of Warholian approach, actually, very Pop.
And saying that Tarantino films are "bareboned" and not edited well is probably the weakest argument you can make against him. Pulp Fiction is a masterpiece of editing, and it sustains Kill Bill Vol. 1.
Likewise, saying Guy Ritchie's career isn't in the doldrums is hard to justify: His past two films were both universally assailed by critics and made a combined $7 million...internationally. Uh...how is that not a career that could use a rebound?
One final note: I don't believe the Sherlock Holmes will be modernized. He'll still be in the late 19th Century, so far as I know. Show me one instance in Guy Ritchie's career that indicates familiarity with Victorian settings and a stringent, singular focus on one dominant central character. He's certainly not the first name that comes to mind for a film like that. He's good at quick-paced ensemble pieces filled with idiots. That doesn't sound like Sherlock Holmes to me. What about someone like Joe Wright? Kenneth Branagh? Christopher Nolan?
terrence malick. 20 years.
also sidney lumet comes to mind.
I agree with Terrence Malick. I just read he's adding more footage to the DVD of The New World, apparently so the last 400 years of American civilization can be told in real time.
Lumet made very good films for a very long time, almost 30 years of quality. Very few directors have had the periods of productivity Lumet has. Downhill since the mid-80s, but Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was excellent.
Just thought I'd mention that as much as I love Snatch and Lock Stock, as a whole, I think Layer Cake is a far superior picture then both of them, with better writing, performances, directing and just overall quality.
How can you possibly say Revolver is a bad film, just because you don"t understand it doesn't mean it is Bad. If a picture doesn't make it big at the box office that shouldn't be the only way to gauge wether it's good or not.
In my opinion Revolver was a great film, Interesting and Dark and requires some digestion. It defiantly beats the hell out of the average crap we get bombarded with from Hollywood.
I think Guy Ritchie is a great Director and is not going anywhere, he will continue to do what he does regardless of what you think about him.
It's not that I didn't understand Revolver so much as it just didn't make any damn sense. Movies should always have a point.
As to your suggestion that Ritchie will keep making movies, you're right. Plenty of directors who have outlived their usefulness have enjoyed long careers making garbage. Let's hope he can return to his former glory instead.
You are displaying a bit of ego here, in thinking that your opinions on this subject matter.
You can believe that Ritchie is dead in the water. I do not. I enjoyed Revolver, and will probably enjoy Rocknrolla. Beyond that, what else matters?
I've enjoyed his films, too...the good ones. As for ego, any director who could walk away from Swept Away and Revolver thinking they're good enough the way they are displays a massive ego, or at least a poor working definition of good enough.
Colin Boyd is a fag.
Nope. Nor am I staggeringly immature.