20 Years of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

20 Years of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

People who like playing casino games, usually search for three things online: new online casino games, promo code sites such as nj-casinos.online and, if they just want to relax, they might search for a casino-related movie. Many gambling movies are predictable and boring, but not this one.

Perhaps what everyone who has seen this movie will remember most is the way it ended. It could be said to have ended in an “open-ended manner”. The directors and the scriptwriters leaving it for the audience to decide with abated breaths what exactly the outcome of the last scene should be.

The movie was released in 1998, and it starred two athletes Vinnie Jones and former Olympic diver Jason Statham, in fact, this was Jason’s Statham’s first movie. The movie almost didn’t get released to the American audience, but just for the good word which Tom Cruise put in for the movie.

During the American screening saying it was the best movie he had seen in a while, and those invited for the screening would be foolish not to buy. In the end, Cruise was right.

The movie made close to $4 in U.S box office sales, and then over $28 million in international box office sales. The movie was produced by Matthew Vaughan and directed by Guy Ritchie. The first scene starts with Bacon (Jason Statham) and his friend trying to sell fake goods to the public, they are busted by the police and then they flee the scene.

The whole movie whirlwind actually starts when these friends, Bacon, Soap, Eddy and Toms pool 100k pounds together, and trying to enter into a card game. At the end of the card game which was rigged, they owned some crime lord 500,000 pounds. And this was where the whirlwind chase for money, resulting in some heists, many shootouts and even more deaths. In the end, though, the four friends, of course, survive the shootings, they steal money, it is re-stolen, but they are left with a way to get some money back, about 300,000 pounds.

Earlier they procured some antique rifles, which was actually what could get them that much money. Unfortunately, they had told one of their friends to dispose the rifle into the river, and that’s where the movie ends, with them trying to call their friend on the phone who is already about throwing the pair of guns into the river.

This movie was released in the UK, 20 years ago, and then about 19 years ago in the U.S. it was a released to critical acclaim and was a commercial success. It was a movie about drugs, guns and gambling. It actually brought out a bit about London’s crime world into the open. It could be called a textbook representation of modern gangster movie, quite different from the Italian Mafia movies of the 80’s and early 90’s.

With Radio Times reviewer John Ferguson referring to the movie as the best British crime movie since “The Long Good Friday”.

The movie was so influential that it paved the way for some other great movies and TV shows and also was a stepping stone for both some of the actors (Statham and Vinnie), and also the producer and the director of the film. Riding on the influence of this film will give birth to a seven-episode soap series of the same movie, Lock, Stock and Barrel 2, the sequel to the first movie which will also cast Brad Pitt. The movie in a way also birthed Snatch, which was also directed by Guy Ritchie. Lock and Stock influenced many other movies in the crime/comedy genre.  

The movie also started some romances as Madonna and Guy Ritchie will get married in 2000 just to mention a few. As far as crime movies of the 90’s were concerned this fast past comic movie will not be forgotten in a hurry.