RocknRolla – 3 smiles

Director Guy Ritchie’s movies are always about the inhabitants of London’s underworld and “RocknRolla” is no exception. However, “RocknRolla” is also a ridiculously fun movie, beginning with its energetic story, a crazily complicated tale of double and triplecrosses that involves Lenny, a mob boss (Tom Wilkinson), his drug-addict rock star stepson (Toby Kebbell), a Russian mobster (Karel Roden), his fruadulent accountant (Thandie Newton) and an assortment of low-ranking foot soldiers (including Gerard Butler and Idris Elba). Ritchie does not allow his plot to devolve into incomprehensibility although it could have. There’s a pair of American record executives, a valuable painting, some Russian thugs who are hard to kill, and a hilarious chase sequence where the participants eventually end up walking. And although the characters are not well developed, Ritchie invests them with enough humanity that they are real people and we care what happens to them. One note of interest is actor Mark Strong, who has a prominent role in “Body of Lies.” In “RocknRolla,” he plays Archie, second in command to Lenny and the film’s clever narrator. “RocknRolla” is a pleasurable way to spend a rainy afternoon – or a sunny one, for that matter. 11/1/08