Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Critic Reviews

If the dialect is hard to comprehend, that soon becomes part of the joke. It's unlikely that even the British audiences who made Lock, Stock a big hit got it all.Read the full review

The laborious title of an even more laborious Cockney action movie that some people think is the cat's pajamas crossbred with the bee's knees.Read the full review

Though Ritchie’s screenplay scores a 10 for sheer complexity and cleverness, it rates much lower down the scale for comprehensibility and audience involvement.Read the full review

A special weapon unto itself. Spring-loaded with cockney esprit, it peppers its audience with aggressive, sarcastic grapeshot. That's English for "fun," by the way.Read the full review

Flashy, random shifts of film speed and a true rogues' gallery of striking if one-note characters, do hold interest even if they have no real right to. The commercial aspects also deflect attention from the fact that this story has almost no center at all.Read the full review

It's a superior thriller made with the guts and gusto that too many recycled entries into the genre fail to exhibit.Read the full review

The acting, mostly by a bunch of unknowns, is equally fresh and funny, and Ritchie keeps the movie moving faster than you can say, "bludgeoned to death by a 15-inch black rubber dildo."Read the full review

Dark, dangerous and a great deal of wicked, amoral fun. A film that manages to be as clever, playful and mock violent as its title, Lock, Stock was a major hit in its native Britain and its cheeky tone, simultaneously calculated and off the cuff, is as hip as anyone could want. [5 Mar 1999]Read the full review

The film's lures, while undeniable, are synthetic, and we never do learn what fuels all the greed besides pints of beer.Read the full review