TonyMontana96 (Originally seen in 2016) Guy Ritchie is just retracing his footsteps here, but what makes this a terrible film and not just a bad one, is the forced Hollywood diversity, involving a homosexual storyline, this story is boring, pointless and cheap. I am sick and tired of forced topics that are not in the slightest entertaining. The performances are stupid, especially Thandie Newton as an emotionless songwriter and the dialogue is recycled or laughable and the pacing is a mess. The film was so slow I only got to the 45 or so minute mark before exiting. Overall Guy Ritchie's last impressive film came out 8 years prior to this and I think he's finished, this film is unoriginal, terribly written, and fairly unwatchable. 0/10

djm_trading One of the few films that. I have ever given up on. My wife and I got 40 minutes in, and decided it wasn't interesting, funny, clever or charming. The only skill we could discern, was that of making so many talented actors act so incredibly poorly. The script sounded like it was written by a clever teenager; naive and heavy handed without any of the subtlety that experience would bring.

patrick powell You buy a bottle of Guinness, a bar or Lindt dark chocolate or you boil yourself and egg and eat it on toast and you're not going to get many surprises, you'll get what you paid for but you'll enjoy then just the same. Guy Ritchies's gangster films are just like that: you know what you're in for and there ain't a single surprise, but you enjoy them just the same. Ritchie has his formula and it's a winner.When, in the past he's strayed from that formula, he's ended up with egg on his face, so he's best off sticking to his formula: a convoluted plot, a set of stereotypical London gangster, loads of witty one-liners, and all of it presented in a fast-cut style and two hours later you rise from your seat sufficiently entertained. That's it.Ritchie is never going to win an Oscar, never going to gain kudos from 'cineastes', but as long as he delivers the goods - and sticks to his formula - he'll always have an audience. That's it really.

Semisonic When one says "Guy Ritchie's cult film", they usually mean either Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch. No wonder. These films defined Ritchie as a world-famous director, and since they both found their way to the IMDb Top 250, apparently the audience loves them too.I saw those films, and they are without a doubt a high class cinema. Yet it is RocknRolla that i truly fell in love with. And there's a reason for that. You see, Guy Ritchie might be a god, but not an almighty one. His field is called "criminal comedy", this is the genre which he rules. And when it comes to criminal comedies, there are two things that are the most important - the criminal part and the comedic one. And while to some it might seem like an easy thing - "just shoot and make jokes" - in fact it's not that simple. Crimes are essentially bad from the regular people's point of view, and to be believable they do have to look serious. But serious things don't make people laugh, especially when it comes to robbing or killing people. So keeping all the grimy details but serving them in a way so that the audience takes them with a light-hearted smile is a real art.I think Guy Ritchie wasn't always a true wizard of his craft. His skills and tricks needed some time and practice to hone. And while his earlier films had the advantage of freshness, which is probably why they are so highly rated by people, they lacked a certain subtlety and technical perfection. Both Lock Stock and Snatch had their not-so-brilliant moments when they were losing the pace or were getting a bit too dramatic to be fun. It might mean more versatility, but when you have a particular genre to tend to, versatility at the cost of breaking out of it isn't always a good thing.Enter RocknRolla. A traditionally intricate and ingenious story about the people of the under- and upper world and the incredible coincidences that bring them together. It's pointless to describe what exactly happens in Ritchie's movies, since it's not the plot that makes a difference, it's the little episodes and details. And in this film our master shows himself as a real genius. To me, there was no single unnecessary scene or character, no single miss of intonation. This is a long film - almost two hours - and during all this time it never makes you feel bored or sad. And this is exactly the kind of magic we expect Guy Ritchie to cast on us, right? The only downside i could find in this film is that its main twist was sorta taken from another British crime comedy, Layer Cake, a film that tries its best to look as if it was made by Ritchie, but it isn't. It's not that much of a disappointment, since these movies are totally different in all the other details and the overall delivery, but it kinda undermines the creative genius of Guy Ritchie who, given four years between these two films, could've come up with some other equally fitting trick from up his sleeve.Other than that, RocknRolla is the best i have seen from Guy Ritchie so far, and probably the best criminal comedy there is. Perfectly polished, perfectly balanced and perfectly delivered. And it's simply too bad that Butler, Elba, Hardy and the other principal actors don't see it fit for themselves to take on the sequel that was promised. Because nothing they have done ever since is even close in either style or substance to RocknRolla (Hardy's Warrior is the exception that only proves the rule), and it's simply unfair to make the fans wait for so long.