Credits Director : Guy Ritchie Starring : Jason Statham Ray Liotta, Vincent Pastore, Andre Benjamin Our Score :

By Clint Morris

I was all ready to open my review of this film with the comment “How could something so beautiful, be so bad?” and as terrific an opener as that line would've been – since it's a direct quote from the film – it'd be too quick and too brash a judgment. “Revolver” is many things, but it definitely isn't “bad”.

Guy Ritchie returns to the type of crime drama he made his name for with this visually-stunning but slightly over-ambitious action pic about an ex-con (Jason Statham, looking almost unrecognizable with hair on his head and fluff on his cheeks) whose recruited by two mysterious men (Vincent 'Big Pussy' Pastore and Andre '3000' Benjamin) to carry out a series of series of tasks for them. What the hero gets in return is his life back.

To say any more about the plot would be to rob “Revolver” of it's most original – for better or worse – element, let's just say it definitely isn't the type of film you'd expect from the director of “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch”, far from it. Either Ritchie had just sat through a week-long David Lynch-movie marathon when he started to write the script, or his Mrs, the always unpredictable Madonna, slipped some of her special herbs in his Tea, because this one's a bit of a mish-mash of everything.

Is it as clever as it thinks it is? No, probably not. Is it accessible to a wide audience? Not at all (and that may explain why the distributor kept it on the shelf for a couple of years before releasing it). This is indeed a peculiar film. Most will probably loathe it, because it's a smart-arsey piece of celluloid that's seemingly got it's dick grasped firmly in hand for its duration, but those that like to “guess what the heck that was all about?” should find something of interest here.

Personally, I'm torn. I appreciated the production values – though the animated sequence in the middle of the film was a direct rip-off of Quentin Tarantino's “Kill Bill” - and thought the performances, especially by the always welcomingly manic Ray Liotta, were impressive, but the story as a whole just didn't hold my attention as much as I'd hoped to – even when I could understand what was going on.

Less Lynch, more Guy next time, OK Ritchie?

Extras include a commentary by Ritchie (who doesn't offer any clues into what the film's about. "This film is about a formula and the repetition of that formula and what the mind does is complicate that formula, but really it's a repetition of that same formula."), some deleted scenes (the rumour about Madonna making a cameo must've been just that) and outtakes, and a couple of featurettes on the making-of the movie.