Empire
4 stars out of 5 -- "Ritchie isn't reverting -- he's progressing, bolting this new, stranger, stronger visual style onto the kind of shaggy-dog tale that made him..." 10/01/2008 p.52USA Today
"ROCKNROLLA takes director Guy Ritchie back to London's gritty streets....There's plenty of mayhem and bullet-ridden violence, some of it quite jolting. Still, the film is punctuated with moments of dark humor." 10/08/2008 Los Angeles Times
"Ritchie dials down the pace, soaking up the atmosphere....Ritchie whisks you along on a whirlwind tour, but he's not averse to putting on the brakes long enough to admire some of his favorite attractions." 10/08/2008 Premiere
"ROCKNROLLA is a 21st century version of Guy Ritchie's earlier films. The banter is wittier; the criminals are slicker, sexier, and more devious; and the soundtrack is more rock 'n' roll than ever." 10/30/2008 Box Office
5 stars out of 5 -- "ROCKNROLLA is simply a blast, a gleeful romp from start to finish, and by far Ritchie's strongest, most assured movie to date." 11/01/2008 p.78 Entertainment Weekly
"Gerard Butler, from 300, uses his burly, earthy gruffness to ground the movie, and he's surrounded by terrific actors." -- Grade: B 10/17/2008 p.78 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "The casting, acting, dialogue and direction are career bests, essaying a touch that comes with experience." 01/01/2009 155 ReelViews 6 of 10
Guy Ritchie made his mark for film-goers not by marrying one of the world's most visible pop stars, but by crafting Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. He exploded onto the cinematic scene with the former; the reaction from Hollywood was so ecstatic that the latter became virtually a higher-budget remake of its predecessor. Still, while the two may co-mingle in the memory, both are entertaining in their own right. After that, Ritchie began believing his press about doing no wrong and went off the deep end. His most recent features illustrate how badly he has miscalculated his aptitude. Swept Away, a horrific remake of the Lina Wertmuller masterpiece starring the aforementioned pop star, and Revolver, were unmitigated disasters - seen by few and liked by almost none. RocknRolla is Ritchie's attempt to return to his roots: rough and tumble action, convoluted plots, and rat-a-tat-tat dialogue. All of these things are on exhibit in RocknRolla, but they do not flow smoothly. They feel forced and unnatural, as if Ritchie is keenly aware of what needs to do to placate the naysayers but can't put everything together in a way that recaptures the magic. As punchy and energetic as the first few moments are, the rest of the film quickly falls back into mediocrity...RocknRolla often feels more like a parody of a Guy Ritchie film than a real movie. Lock, Stock and Snatch both rolled along like bizarre cinematic Rube Goldberg machines where the endings justified the convulsions needed to get to that point. RocknRolla breaks down along the way and the ending is so anti-climactic that it leaves one wondering: "Is that all?" Based on the evidence at hand, one can safely state that Ritchie is a one-note director. With RocknRolla, that note is off-key. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
I'm looking at "RocknRolla" and I'm thinking, why make a movie about stealing a parcel of London real estate, when you could make a movie about stealing a trillion bucks of real estate? British gangsters may dress better than Wall Street overlords and be more colorful, but they just don't think big...Guy Ritchie's latest movie is about some very hard cases from the London and Russian underworlds who are all trying to cheat on one another, and about an accountant who the term femme fatale has been hanging around waiting to describe. It's one of those rare circular con jobs where you can more or less figure out what's going on, and you can more or less understand why nobody else does, although at various times, they all think they do, and at other times, you're wrong. While they engage in these miscalculations, they act terrifically dangerous to one another -- so smoothly you'd swear they were in the second year of a repertory tour...The bottom line is, all these people chase the same money around with the success of doggie tail-biting, and it's a lot of fun, and it's not often in these con films that everybody is conning everybody, and they're all scared to death, and nobody knows which cup the pea is under..."RocknRolla" (which is how they say "rock and roller" in the East End) isn't as jammed with visual pyrotechnics as Ritchie's "Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrel" (1998), but that's OK, because with anything more happening, the movie could induce motion sickness. It never slows down enough to be really good, and never speeds up enough to be the Bourne Mortgage Crisis, but there's one thing for sure: British actors love playing gangsters as much as American actors love playing cowboys, and it's always nice to see people having fun. - Roger Ebert
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