Movie night

Yesterday I ventured well away from the gringo areas of Quito in search of a rubber camping mattress (that I need for padding out my kayak). However, while there weren´t any tourists around it definitely wasn´t dangerous. I basically went through a series of very large malls, completely similar to a Westfields or similar back in Australia.

Highlight of the day? Walking past a Dungeons and Dragons shop and seeing all the Ecuadorian nerds sitting around playing D&D card games! Was a slightly darker skinned but otherwise exact replica of their counterparts back home!

Anyway, I thought it would be cool to see a movie, since I haven´t been to the cinema in a while, so I went and checked it out. I was keen to see Wolverine, which was advertised as being out, but it wasn´t. Choices were a bit hard because all the posters were in Spanish, but eventually I went for RocknRolla, only because I recognised Thandie Newton´s name, and she´s been in some pretty good movies.

Once I got in, I recognised a lot of the actors (just not by name), but more importantly, I discovered it was a Guy Ritchie movie! ¨Cool,¨ I thought, ¨this should be fun.¨ And it was!

In fact, it follows the visual and storytelling styles of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch quite closely. It´s immediately and obviously recognisable as a Guy Ritchie movie, and this is a GOOD THING in my opinion.

The movie features gangsters (believe it or not), crazy, violent, Russians that seem impossible to stop, different story lines that all gradually merge together, lots of strong accents and a mostly male cast (although Thandie Newton is quite fun). As I said, it´s a Guy Ritchie movie.

I really enjoyed it, it was funny, dramatic, a little bit deep (all you need to know about life is found on the walls of cigarette packet), violent and generally entertaining. Plus I really liked the ending, especially the line about how much the painting was worth.

If you liked Lock Stock or Snatch than you should enjoy this, although it´s not quite as good as either. I´ve never seen that movie he made with Madonna, but I imagine it´s absolutely nothing like this at all.

I give it 3 stars out of 5.

check out the trailer.




and see a negative review here

cheers

Harry