Lock Stock legacy: Two Smoking Barrels, 25 Years On

The “Cool Britannia” crime caper film recharged British film and launched several careers in the late 90s. With Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle and Jason Statham’s The Beekeper aiming to launch new franchises, Dan Slevin asks whether it was all really for the best.

Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was Guy Ritchie’s first feature film as director, Matthew Vaughn’s first film as producer, and both Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones’ first acting roles. The first three have gone on to become pillars of the British film industry while Jones has used his ‘hard man’ persona to combine acting with reality television presenting.

So, the success has been good for them, but has the impact of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels been good for audiences … or for the culture?

The Film

Made during the heady days of “Cool Britannia” when Tony Blair’s New Labour government was giving Britain (or more specifically, England) its cultural mojo back after many years of Tory rule, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was the British film of 1998. It takes its cue from 70s and 80s TV gangster shows like The Sweeney and Minder – and features a few familiar actors from those days in character parts, faces that gave the film a bit of rough and ready credibility.

But the leads were going to be fresh faces: three former child actors (Nick Moran, Dexter Fletcher and Jason Flemyng) and a former Commonwealth Games diver named Jason Statham.

In the film, Moran’s character Eddy has a cast iron plan to make half a million quid in a card game and his mates provide the float. The game soon goes south, however, and the quartet find themselves on the hook to “Hatchet” Harry (P H Moriarty) and in fear for their lives. Eddy’s dad, J D (played by Sting) refuses to bail him out but it looks like Harry will take his bar regardless.

To make enough money quickly to get back square with Harry, our boys decide to rob a local gangster’s hydroponic weed factory. That goes about as well as you might expect – including the kidnapping of a poor traffic warden played by a young Rob Brydon – and the body count soon mounts up.

This is a film that thinks of itself as a cross between Minder and Reservoir Dogs, so it’s full of wisecracks, impenetrable cockney lingo, bloody deaths by shotgun and a vast amount of heavy-duty cuss words.

As a young man, I loved it. It was the first DVD I ever bought!

It’s incredibly pacy and energetic thanks to Ritchie’s hyped-up camera and Niven Howie’s editing, the sepia cinematography gives it a classic old East End feel, and it really did seem like it was something fresh.

But rewatching recently, now I’m not so sure about it. It’s a very male, criminal wish-fulfilment, fantasy and there’s no place for women in that boozy, matey, “lad magazine” world. Like Loaded and early Russell Brand, it prioritises men’s fun regardless of the damage it does.  

Guy Ritchie

The first of the Lock Stock boys to cash in was writer-director Guy Ritchie who soon attracted top Hollywood talent like Brad Pitt to his follow-up film, Snatch (2000), and then cast his new wife, Madonna, in a remake of Lina Wertmuller’s Swept Away in 2002.

RocknRolla (2008) was horrible – I wrote that it was “the cinematic equivalent of someone grabbing you around the neck and rubbing their knuckles into your skull.” – but then he went commercial for a while with two Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes films, a King Arthur film that wasn’t too bad and a decent reboot of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The Gentlemen and Wrath of Men were lame Lock Stock retreads but he is now such a big deal that he gets to put his own name in the title of his most recent film, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant.

I would say, on balance, Ritchie’s career has been a negative.

Matthew Vaughn

It turns out that the greatest upholder of the most ugly aspects of Lock Stock and two Smoking Barrels is producer Matthew Vaughn, who turned to directing in 2004. Layer Cake was very much in the same London violent crime milieu (but was at least responsible for Daniel Craig getting a Bond audition), Stardust (2007) was a creditable adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel (notable for the rare sight of Robert De Niro in drag) but then came the repulsive Kick-Ass, a brutish story of a pre-teen superhero played by Chloë Grace Moretz.

After that he made two very poor X-Men movies and started a franchise of his own, the Kingsman series, which presented another ultraviolent fantasy of idealised British power that has now been spun out for three films – four if you include Argylle’s bewildering mid-credit sequence.

Taking Vaughn’s twenty-year career as a director, the response has to be a big “no”.

Dexter Fletcher

Dexter Fletcher might not be the best known of the names on the Lock Stock alumni list, but you’ve probably seen some of his work as a director. He made the delightful Proclaimers musical Sunshine on Leith in 2015 and was brought on to save Bohemian Rhapsody from Bryan Singer in 2018 (helping that film win four Oscars).

Following on from that, he was offered the Elton John biopic Rocketman which was loved by many and made nearly US$200 million at the box office.

So, Fletcher gets a thumbs up from me – also for playing Babyface in Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone when he was only ten years old.

Jason Statham

Arguably the most remarkable career ark out of Lock Stock is the one that belongs to Jason Statham.

He represented England in the diving competition at the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games but otherwise hadn’t done much of note before getting cast as “Bacon” in Ritchie’s film.

His market stall patter in the film helped him stand out and his obvious physical confidence led directors to see an action star in the making. His first big franchise was The Transporter (1, 2 & 3) but one of the most notable things about Statham is that he doesn’t necessarily have to be the lead in every franchise he appears in. He’s content to be a team player in series like Fast & Furious and The Expendables, while taking the lead in his own Meg series and the new (hopefully a franchise) Beekeeper film.

He knows how to laugh at his persona, too, without actually, you know, laughing: Crank (2006) and Spy (2015) are good examples.

Statham’s career is definitely a positive for the world of movies. Big tick there.

Vinnie Jones

What can we say about the unlikely career of Vinnie Jones, former professional footballer with a reputation as a loose cannon (his team, Wimbledon, were known as the Crazy Gang), now a sometime actor and television presenter. Lock Stock was his first performance and his appearance as mob debt collector Big Chris was one of the highlights of the film, despite being a bit of stunt casting on Ritchie’s part.

Knowing his limitation as an actor, he has specialised in violent characters in action films but he’s currently on NZ screens in the reality show Vinnie Jones in the Country on ThreeNow.

Jones’ career is rated even-stevens by me, mainly for the simple fact that it exists.

That’s two thumbs up, two thumbs down and one 50-50, making it a tie as to whether Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels has been a net good for humanity. Hmmm, I might need to go and revisit those scores …

The 25^th anniversary Blu-ray of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is rated R18 for violence and contains two versions of the film: the theatrical cut on Blu-ray disc and the longer director’s cut on DVD. RRP is $29.95.