3.19.99 00:07:09
Mayhem reigns for 'Barrel' of fun

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
***** (out of five)
Starring Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Nick Moran, Jason Statham, Steven Mackintosh, Nicholas Rowe, Nick Marcq, Charles Forbes, Vinnie Jones, Lenny McLean, Peter McNicholl, P.H. Moriarty, Sting. A Gramercy Pictures release written and directed by Guy Ritchie. Rated R, contains violence, profanity, nudity. Running time: 108 minutes.

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal Arts Writer

Brimming over with exuberant energy, zany fun and wit, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels might be what you'd get if you mixed up the reels of Quentin Tarantino's caper film Reservoir Dogs with Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night starring The Beatles.

Already a smash hit in Britain, where it had the biggest box-office debut ever for a British film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels follows the calamitous adventures of four young London con men who get tangled up with big-time players and big-time violence.

The prime ingredients are a pair of stolen antique guns; a pair of bumbling thieves; a gang of crooks after some drug loot; a gym bag containing more than 500,000 British pounds; a pornographer called Harry the Hatchet and his goon Barry the Baptist; their strongarm muscle Big Chris (whose shakedown partner is his 10-year-old son Little Chris); a West Indian drug dealer mesmerized by TV auto racing; four marijuana gardeners; their zonked-out gal pal; a dimwitted fence named Nick the Greek; mistaken identities; firepower that ranges from semi-automatics to state-of-the-art 17th-century muskets; and the four anti-heroes, who are out of their league. Oh, also Sting, nearly unrecognizable as the father of a young cardsharp who sets the whole commotion in motion when he's suckered in during a crooked high-stakes poker game.

Writer-director Guy Ritchie, Madonna's new best friend, keeps all these elements apart at the start, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. At first it seems four different movies are running concurrently.

But slowly the pieces begin colliding, often in hilarious ways, and mayhem reigns as the four young con men cook up a scheme to get the 500,000 pounds they owe Harry the Hatchet.

It's fast. Well, sometimes. Ritchie uses camera trickery -- sometimes speeded up, sometimes slowed down, sometimes stoped in mid-air -- to make his points.

It's furiously funny. The joy comes from Ritchie springing his various traps. Just when you think all has been resolved, something unexpected happens and the plot goes roaring off in a wild new direction.

Just remember that whatever weird thing happens, no matter how strange or obscure, will return later with a payoff. At one point, the boys enter a pub as a man on fire comes racing out. They do a double take, but the reason for that one-man inferno isn't explained until almost a half-hour later, almost when it has been forgotten. Beautiful!

Only feet needed to get laughs

In another scene, a pair of dimwit thieves are hired by Barry the Baptist (he got his name from nearly drowning his victims during shakedowns) to steal those 17th-century muskets for his boss, Harry the Hatchet (who has the legend ''Harry Lonsdale -- Porn King'' on the nameplate of his door). We see the thieves' feet walking up the Oriental-carpeted stairs of the mansion they've just broken into, followed seconds later by the slipper-clad feet of someone else, presumably the armed owner of the house. Just legs. That's all Ritchie needs to set us up for a laugh.

He also uses an amusingly cynical narrator to explain the motives of the players and how they got where they are. And he likes sight gags -- crooks torturing two men by using them in a bizarre golf game; the arrival of elaborate tropical drinks in a pub that turns out to be a Samoan bar; having Little Chris (Peter McNicholl) dressed exactly the same as his strongarm father Big Chris (Vinnie Jones).

The thick accents of a lot of players are a drawback. One scene is even subtitled . . . and a good thing, because it's done in British slang.

But once you get the rhythm of the piece and realize that everything in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is tied together somehow, it's great fun. Hang on!

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