Revolver: Greed on Full Blast
November 07, 2005

Maybe this is a good thing: As a person who likes to judge first and adjust later, I’ve been unable to figure out if I actually like Guy Ritchie’s new film Revolver. When I first saw Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, I got sucker-punched into his world. Contrary to many, I gave him credit for having an evolutionary mindset, and refused to think of him as a Tarantino rip-off. Snatch, unfortunately, was a rehash—Although it was enjoyable, it was just a slightly more refined Lock, Stock targeted towards an international audience.

And then, of course, he married Madonna. Swept Away was a bit of a disgrace (and I say that having lacked the patience to see the whole film). Now comes Revolver: It’s being universally panned by critics, and most of them are dead on. The film is pretentious, superfluous and confusing as shit. It tries to be so many things (or, as Ritchie says, it’s “a chess game, within a chess game, within a chess game”) but falls flat on most fronts.

Guns, drugs, the mafia and the triad—Everyone and everything that Mr. Ritchie loves is present here. The plot, in essense, is not complex, but the storytelling is so incredibly convoluted that it takes you at least a third of the film to get somewhat comfortable. What kills me is that stylistically this is superior to his previous films, and in theory, it's considerably more substantial. But maybe Ms. Ciccone has gotten to him: The Kabbalah-influenced psychology bursts through the seams at every other line of dialogue. By the end, we have a hard time understanding which chess game begins when, ends where and find ourselves without our queen.

Is the film enjoyable? I think so, yes. Is this film good? Again, I don’t know. I’m leaning towards “no” in the same way I leaned towards “no” when it came to David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. I believe that the director of a film needs to respect the audience’s intelligence but not test their patience with disjointed mumbo jumbo that would pass for so-called art house genius. In some ways, I commend Ritchie for trying something different, but urge that next time he come back down to earth to meet us halfway between Snatch and Revolver.

All this being said, Revolver will remain in my memory because of one specific sequence that is as excruitiately beautiful as it is clever. It is also one of the most important scenes in the film that the viewer will, the first time around, fail to accept at anything beyond face value. It’s a metaphor for both the film as well as the storyline and is best put by triad boss Lord John: “How could anything that looks so good be so bad?”

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Hi!! >.< what's up??

I rented In the Mood for Lurve, and Days of Being Wild?? I forget already... i'll tell you my thoughts after I watched it!

i picked up haruki murakami's books..after reading about them here. sputnik sweetheart, norwegian wood and the wind up bird chronicle.

for some reason, he's not very popular here and had never heard of him before. .
reading the last one at the moment and i love it!
thank you!!

yo rahat.
one of my law professors said something that made me think of you, and after i heard it, i wanted to say that either i've read it in your writings, or that i SHOULD'VE read it in your writings.
'perfect unreality.'

anyway - ntaqvi@gmail.com - b/c i'm a g - drop me a line sometime, old-timer. i will tell you all about my law school hell. or i will just cuss, which is pretty much the same thing.