[Movie Review] Revolver

[Sazar]

I watched a few movies this week, not all in one day just in case y'all are wondering.

Revolver is I guess an attempt by Guy Ritchie to relive the glory of his lock/stock movie and his follow-up called Snatch.

A few of the usual suspects are still present and once again, Jason Statham is the key player but in a very different kind of setup.

For some reason, it seems the sharp, witty story and snappy camera angles are not used for an amusing crime caper but rather to create a complex world of characters and situations.

I must admit, I had the characters figured out less than half way through, heck it was probably 1/3rd the way, but I kept watching.

The ending was a little flat but the situations Statham continuously finds himself in were quite well thought out and presented. There are some scenes, such as the car accident scene, which are really brilliantly put together and remind of a few "open your eyes" type sequences from the original matrix.

The acting could have been better, the story sharper and teh dialogue more witty but, its still a very good movie IF you give it a chance.

Don't expect the movie to be the same as the other 2 I listed because it is not. Jason Statham is not a classical actor but his eyes convey emotions better than any other actor out there I think and he makes a VERY believable gambler with a problem.

All in all I thought it was a very good look at the inner-workings of a human mind.

3.5/5 OSNN stars.

 

[ray_gillespie]

*Very mild spoilers ahead*

It's fair to say that I'm a fan of Guy Ritchie's first two films, and I had heard all the scathing reviews of Revolver and also a few really-****-fanboy's "I'm clever because I get it" reviews, so I didn't really know what to expect.
On balance, I would say I enjoyed it. I thought both the acting and the script were slightly weak, but the storyline itself was quite interesting. The only major problem I had with the film was that it was more pretentious than a Will Self novella. I got the feeling that Ritchie was really trying to look clever and make a semi art-house film, but it somehow didn't work. Those stupid quotes and proverbs just annoyed me, and the style-over-substance camera work just served to enhance the pretentiousness of the film.
I liked the way the story was very open ended, with the motives/minds/existence of some characters being very uncertain, and at times it felt like almost like a Leone film with people possessing almost super-human instincts, minds and shooting abilities :dead: .
I felt some scenes were too vague or long winded, particularly the lift scene, which was stretched out beyond my attention span (which I modestly consider to be quite long :lick. I also didn't really connect with any of the characters, perhaps this is inherent with the polymorphous characters (similar to Rashomon or Hero), but it didn't really work for me. There were some good characters that I liked, such as the brother and the sharp-shooting hitman, but they were only really minor characters. None of the major characters appealed to me.
I tried to see through the crap as much as I could, and I found that I enjoyed the film to a certain extent. However, had I not been tipped-off by the awful reviews I would have been completely disappointed by this and quite upset with Ritchie for ruining a potentially good film, I can see how the first people that went to see it were so annoyed.

Essentially, in a one-sentence summary, I thought it was quite a good film mostly ruined by pretentious crap that smothers a lot of the good qualities of the film. 2.5/5 OSNN Stars

PS When I look at recent sh1te like Alien Vs Predator, this film doesn't seem quite so bad so it's 2/5 became 2.5/5 lol