Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Blog Journal

Tyree

Task 2.3

Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Blog Journal

Target Audience- British Audiences

Similar to 'City of God', the film was written in its own British dialect with a British speaking targeted audience, the same way that 'City of God' was specifically written for Brazilian speaking audiences. This makes the film very culturally different compared to 'Scarface' which is a big Hollywood production with a big name star and director and in a business side of things, open to a wider audience, whereas this film is on a smaller scale and featured (at the time) unknown actors and an unknown director. Visually and artistically, the film was shot with dark, gloomy lighting, giving the film a slight grey/green tint. The film also has the actors wearing very authentic costumes and speaking in conventional (or stereotypical, if you're an International viewer) London cockney slang. The writer/director, Guy Ritchie immediately knew that American/International audiences would never understand what any of the characters are saying, due to the characters using 'cockney rhyming slang', so in one scene, he edits in some some subtitles so  that the rest of the World can briefly understand what they're saying. The inclusion of these subtitles adds onto the humorous tone of the film, and the scripts dark British wit.

This scene featured subtitles so American/International audiences understood what they were saying. This is a good example of the films' tone and sense of humour.

Genre Convention- Crimes

A common convention for all gangster films, and 'Scarface' and 'City of God', the whole film revolves around several criminals and different crimes. Many of the crimes committed are overly violent and are brought on because of drug and weapons deals that have gone awry. Although the crimes seen in the film are very dangerous and chaotic, very little blood is seen,  particularly in the shoot- out scenes. We can compare the differences in the level of violence and how it is shown with 'Scarface', which similarly features many gun battles, but this film shows a lot of blood and it really goes to show the artistic differences between Guy Ritchie and Brian de Palma. Another common scene that is shown in most gangster films is that the gangsters plan out and strategise what they're all going to do, giving the term "organised crime".

Representation- Anti- Heroes and Villains

When it comes to who the 'heroes' are for this film, it is very difficult to determine who in particular they are. Although we can clearly say that the four heroes are Tom, Soap, Eddy and Bacon, the gangsters that the film centres on mostly, they aren't really anything like a conventional hero seen in a film. They are violent gangsters who re trying to save their own skin and are instead seen as 'anti- heroes', because all of them lack the traditional hero qualities, even though they are quite incompetent and don't seem to know what they're doing half the time, and even if they do know what they're doing, they have trouble knowing how to execute it. It's things like these that make them very likeable. We can compare the representation of the characters to the other two gangster films we've watched in class. In 'Scarface', Tony Montana was, at first, our protagonist; he was the central focus of the film and even had some morals when it came to certain things, but he eventually became the film's antagonist once he becomes a notorious drug kingpin. Rocket from 'City of God', heads to a much different, unconventional route. He is in some way a traditional hero, he doesn't do anything remotely evil, and he's a very quiet, mild mannered character who doesn't dream of becoming a powerful gangster or a drug lord, but instead dreams of being a photographer, which is a try honest occupation. Comparisons like these is what shows the difference between different characters. When it comes to the film's villains, Hatchet Harry and Rory Breaker are very conventional gangster film villains; they are extremely powerful, imposing and threatening, and have a recognisable appearance that other characters would fear, we can compare them as villains to Lil' Ze from 'City of God', he was a very powerful person in his line of work, but unlike Harry and Breaker, he is a lot more cruel and mental, rather than threatening enemies with wise words, he threatens them with with his itchy trigger finger. For the rest of the villains who are seen as lower level employees, they are incompetent, too. This film makes the characters out to appear not very good at their jobs, except for Harry and Breaker, and Big Chris (played by Vinnie Jones) . The 'Big Chris' character though constantly tells his son not to curse whilst he's working, which is very funny considering his image, and it's character traits like this that help out with the comedic tone of an otherwise dark film.

Narrative- Unconventional story

This film doesn't feature a 'rise to power' storyline like any other gangster film. With this being a crime-thriller- comedy, it has to feature a story that is simple enough to allow enough jokes in order to entertain the audience. The story is as follows; one of the four lead gangsters, Tom gets in dept with Hatchet Harry, an all- powerful gangster, so he devises a heist with his friends to save his own life. A story like this has the opportunity for many different jokes, and it is made better by the various other interconnected stories that happen around the main one. The 'hyperlink cinema' aspect of the film, mixed with the darkly comic nature of the film brings me to make small comparisons with another film, Pulp Fiction. This film's plot also features various different stories that all go on at the same time, ultimately building up to the first scene in the film, which is actually its last. The final act of the film sees all of the gangsters going after 3 different objects of desire, respectively. These are a batch of weed, some drug money belonging to Rory and a pair of expensive and rare guns. Seeing all of these chases and funny plots at the end of the film, I can't help but think that the film- makers took some inspiration from the 1963 comedy film, 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World', a very strange sort of comparison, but it does seem possible due to 'Lock Stock's' comedic tone. So, narratively, this film is very unconventional but I think that it helped the film's success by giving a unique spin on the gangster genre, especially in British film, and the tone and style has been replicated for other films like 'Snatch' or 'Big Nothing'.