What is a ROCKNROLLA?  As one thug Archie (Mark Strong) says to wealth and fame wannabes in the film, a rocknrolla is one that wants the money, the sex game, the drug, the glamour, the fame i.e. the f***ing lot.” In a way, director Guy Ritchie’s film is the same way.  It wants all the success of his LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH hits by copying the identical formula and style of those two gangster films.

The ROCKNROLLA in the film could be argued to be the up and coming gangster who goes by the name of One Two (Gerard Butler).  He becomes involved in a real estate scam involving member of the underground crime world – not the least being Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson).  The rest of the story is not really worth mentioning as the film centres on gratuitous violence (beatings with a golf club), stylized dialogue and camera shots (like LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS) and actors doing their thing.

Though Ritchie knows how to get the audience riled up and going in parts, the lack of a proper narrative hinders the film’s satisfaction.  He fails to centre his story on the one important protagonist and distracts with too many characters (Stella the accountant, Johnny Quid), eventually residing on the least interesting and most stereotyped ONE TWO.

One must admit that the gangster genre has been done successfully by the Brits.  In the past year, the best was a variation of the gangster/heist genre, Roger Donaldson’s THE BANK JOB with Jason Statham.  ROCKNROLLA has its moments, with the audience frequently cheering in the seats during the screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, but ROCKROLLA (the first of a series) is nothing more than glam-ed up series of action set pieces which put together is really about nothing worth remembering.

ROCKNROLLA is better than REVOLVER and SWEPT AWAY which is not saying much.