Revolver (2007)

"...Ritchie's soporific, proggy-conceptual Film of Ideas, with Vivaldi interludes...[is] nothing if not eccentric...  Nick Pinkerton, The Village Voice
"Electrifying. A psychological thriller full of great visual style...Statham has never been better.  Pete Hammond, Maxim

Editor's Note Director Guy Ritchie's (LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS) fourth feature film is about a hard-bitten gambler named Jake Green (played by Ritchie favorite Jason Statham). Green has just spent a lengthy stretch in jail and is seeking revenge on the man who put him behind bars--crime overlord Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta). Macha's thirst for gambling is his weak spot, and Green exploits it by soundly beating him on a visit to the crime boss's own casino. A hit is subsequently ordered on Green, and he teams up with two tough guys. Avi (Andre Benjamin aka Andre 3000 from Atlanta-based hip-hop outfit Outkast) and Zack (Vincent Pastore) who offer to protect him. Green must give all his money to Avi and Zack, and work for them, if he values his life, so he agrees to the deal despite simultaneously discovering that he suffers from a rare blood disease that will kill him within three days. At this point in the movie Ritchie and writer Luc Besson (who adapted the screenplay from Ritchie's original script) loosen the narrative structure of REVOLVER, deliberately confounding their audience as the film takes a number of oddball twists and turns. The bloodshed and extreme violence of Ritchie's first two films remain, but he takes this movie into unusual territory as Statham's character begins to ponder the meaning of life, scenes are replayed with different consequences, and an assassin (played by Mark Strong) has an existential crisis about his occupation. REVOLVER isn't an easy ride, but it is likely to stir some debate among passionate Ritchie fans as he follows SWEPT AWAY with another unusual addition to his canon.

	Andre Benjamin
	Jason Statham
	Ray Liotta
	Vincent Pastore
	Eve Stewart - Production Designer
	Grant Armstrong - Art Director
	Guy Ritchie - Writer
	Guy Ritchie - Director
	Luc Besson - Producer
	Luc Besson - Writer
	Nathaniel Mechaly - Original Music By
	Romesh Aluwihare, et. al. - Editor
	Sam Stokes - Art Director
	Steve Christian - Executive Producer
	Tim Maurice-Jones - Cinematographer

The Village Voice 7 of 10
For any high-fivin' "Movies for Guys Who Like Movies" bros hoping for the Guy Ritchie of yore, Revolver disappoints. It's no return to rock, this, but rather Ritchie's soporific, proggy-conceptual Film of Ideas, with Vivaldi interludes, fussbudget set design, recurrent references to chess, and a hit man inexplicably got up as Tati's Mr. Hulot. Hobbling stateside after a raping from the U.K. press, Revolver's nothing if not eccentric; at times, I halfway admired the suicidal gambit of making such a gnomic self-actualization gangster pic. All the crime-saga tropes are accounted for--the ronin badass, feuding rival gangs, an invisible criminal overboss--but they do double-duty as allegorical points on the film's schematic layout. Jake Green (Jason Statham) is no sooner released from prison than he's back feuding with casino sleaze Dorothy (Ray Liotta, explosively deviant), but things swiftly go down the rabbit hole as he's indentured to and lectured by a mysterious duo of loan-shark gurus (Andre Benjamin and Vincent Pastore). The plot's hieroglyphic symbolism adds up, finally, to some kind of lesson about the Ego, a fact confirmed by a line-up of Ph.D.'s (and Deepak Chopra) who pop on-screen to tell you exactly that before the credits roll. - Nick Pinkerton