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RocknRolla

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a violent gangster movie that gets some stuff quite right and has a glaring error at the core of its plot. That core idea is that the gang has a rat, and that the rat has been sending the rest of the gang to prison on a regular basis for many years. It doesn't make a tonne of sense but they belabor it by suggesting that there's a legal mechanism where a certain name stands in for the real informant that led to the charges. There's a scene where one of the sharper characters asks into a certain name appearing and then the boss waves him off. The asker had just spent years in prison, and having his boss push him off like that isn't going to raise some questions?

The plot is too cute, too intricate, and too slick. There are too many characters defined not so much by who they are and what the want but by their indulgences and their vocation.

Not recommended. Everything else by director Guy Ritchie is better, and some of it is excellent.