You remember on Friday we showed you a tiny clip of Revolver, the new Guy Ritchie film? And you remember that we said it was supposed to be pretty good?
Yeah, we were wrong.
Revolver opens on September 23rd in England, but it had it’s world
premiere yesterday at the Toronto Film Festival. And nobody that saw it is being
especially kind about it…
Allan Hunter from Screen Daily:
"Revolver is such a
convoluted, risibly overwrought muddle of a thriller… some of the revelations and mind-boggling
conversations that ensue merely provoked derisive laughter among the preview
audience at Toronto."
Kirk Honeycutt from The Hollywood Reporter:
"For all the stylistic flourishes and shifts in mood, a deadly dullness
settles over the action. If every action has multiple meanings and,
possibly, no meaning at all, a weary audience simply checks out of the
movie."
Noel Murray from The Onion AV Club:
"Ritchie’s new direction looks to be even more of a dead end than his old one."
None
of this bodes well for Guy Ritchie, keen to be taken seriously after
the weird mess that was Swept Away. He’s been talking about wanting to make
viewers think by putting "five films in one."
You’d have thought at least one of those five films would have managed to be semi-decent, wouldn’t you?
Read more:
Critics savage Ritchie’s new film – BBC
[story by Stuart Heritage]
Joel says
Revolver is actually an excellent film but its not a cartoon like the first 2 films and actually requires a little thought and extrapolation. It comes as no surprise that the WYSIWYG mentality of americans completely rejected it and it became vogue for critics to lay into it but it is fast becoming a cult classic on DVD, a better place to absorb it then the immediacy of the cinema.
Besides, it has the best assassin since Leon, a nerd assassin, Jason Statham’s finest hour confronting himself in a lift, and Ray Liotta is great as always.
The soundtrack is less obvious than the previous films. Got to love a film that uses Axelrod.
All in all, its not what people were expecting but an artist gotta do what an artist gotta do.
JimmyJam says
Loves itself. Self indulgent clunky script that works just as little on DVD as would have on big screen!
Manfred Powell says
Great movie.
It might not have the immediate plug-and-play value of ‘Lock, Stock…’ or ‘Snatch’, but it’s certainly crafted as a better film. A visual feast, a conceptual head-scratcher and a heck of a film.
Perhaps Guy Ritchie’s best work to date.
This is one of those few films where I actually left the cinema, and thought to myself: “I have got to get that on DVD when it comes out…”
Connor says
I loved its my new favorite film. I loved all the numerology in it. The chess and ego symbols as well. Now I know why some people are disapointed in it. When I first heard the name revolver I instantly thought of another movie that is just bullet after bullet. So if you dont like films that make you think ( I do) and you were expecting a moronic shoot em up feel you would not like any part of this movie. Except for the nerd assassin scene that was cool.