RocknRolla: review

No one does reinvention quite like Madonna. So her presence in London last night at the world premiere of her husband’s latest film was fitting as well as supportive. Put bluntly, Guy Ritchie’s career needs reviving after two disastrous flops, and RocknRolla was billed as the film to provide it.

The cockney gangster caper, with multiple plot lines and plenty of laddish jokes, is a return to the formula that served Ritchie so well on his breakthrough films, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.

Will it rescue his reputation? For all the excitement in Leicester Square when his wife turned up en route to her Amsterdam show tonight, the signs are not encouraging.

Alan Horn, the president of Warner Bros, which is distributing RocknRolla, has already damned it with faint praise. “I think it’s a well-made picture, but while it’s funny in spots, it’s very English,” he said. “I don’t think it’s broadly commercial. It feels like a film that deserves a spirited release [in the US], but not a wide one.”

Joel Silver, the film’s producer, whose credits include The Matrix and Lethal Weapon, appears to have lost his golden touch. He was reported to be hawking the film around rival studios in the hope of finding a champion prepared to back it more heavily.

It all looked so different ten years ago. Ritchie was on a roll. He was aged 29 when Lock, Stock became one of the biggest-grossing British films of all time and established him as a director to watch. Hollywood stars jumped at the chance to work with him, and not long afterwards he met Madonna.

The boy from Hatfield married the Material Girl from Michigan at a Highland castle and together they set about a very English existence of horse- riding, shooting and being spied upon by the neighbours.

In 2003 Ritchie made the turkey Swept Away, with his wife as an obnoxious socialite marooned on an island with a swarthy communist. Revolver, his next effort, was intended as a philosophical crime flick but baffled audiences and critics.

Ritchie at least wakes up this morning with a plan, should RocknRolla be a hit. He plans to turn it into a trilogy after shooting a new version of the Sherlock Holmes story. “If people go and see this and like it, I’ll make the second one straight away,” he said.

Speaking before his superstar wife arrived, Ritchie described his latest film as an indulgence. “It’s the kind of film I like. I’ve made a film for me. My inspiration came from the fact that London has changed so much in the last ten years.”

He said that there was a lot of money in the capital and an increasing influence of Russian billionaires. “The film reflects the big guys and their big properties; they haven’t been touched by the credit crunch.”

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• Oscars

• Cannes

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette