Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is the bastard offspring of Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting, featuring a generally abject assortment of London lowlife caught in an escalating swirl of swindle and vice. The movie maintains Quentin Tarantino's level of gleeful violence, racism and homophobia (perhaps even upping the ante), although writer-director Guy Ritchie throws in a dash of misogyny for extra seasoning. The premise is that of its progenitors: drugs, debt, greed and guns. Lock lacks the cinematic stylizations and mordant wit that gave Trainspotting redemptive panache. Instead, Ritchie overburdens the film with an immature tangle of sub-plots and underdeveloped characters.