"Revolver" (2005) - Movie Review

“Pulp Fiction” by Quentin Tarantino marks as time line for many film goers love for the new form of style and element in their art. “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” by Guy Ritchie is a similar landmark for me in the wake of vigorous film going days. “Revolver” which opened only in UK around 2005 with poor reviews opened very limited in December 2007 in US. Then it hit the DVD shelves and I have been eyeing for it to be viewed for say more than two years despite the warnings and disappointments critics showed. It is not disappointing but convoluted and unnecessarily complicated.

With his regular actor Jason Statham as Jake Green this time Ritchie ropes up Ray Liotta. The film happens in a city which reminds of Vegas because of its casinos and has gangster places we have seen previously in other films. It does now and then look like “Sin City”. Green is out after serving seven years of solitary confinement in prison narrates us his rules in any game which soon transpires in to his life. Two years later he is big in cash but wanted to slap the face on a Casino owner and his arch enemy Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta). He wins big in the king’s den and marked for death. Two openly ambiguous and unknown personalities emerge Zach (Vincent Pastore) and Avi (André Benjamin) who we later come to know as loan sharks. They offer a deal with the dying and marked Green, (1) submit his financials to them without question and (2) follow their orders religiously. Initially he does not approve it believing in the conning game but eventually comes back after hearing his days are numbered to three due to a rare blood disease. It is topsy turvy land from there on.

Having set a trend for himself in the market for sleek crime and dark comedy, this is not one of the usual from Ritchie. It is dark and serious but we do not know whether we need to take it seriously. The film sets up on strenuously detailing us on the quotes and rules of the “game” which Green recites with considerable clarity. Are these clues for the puzzle of the film to be solved? Yes indeed. The pay off is everything in this film which plants on hints. Randomness and chaos are likeable when the director feeds the audience on experience than the believability. “Revolver” set to happen in fantasy world (at least that’s what I took it as) is shallow in its chaotic experience. There is a smugness emerging from the screen looking too low on us. And we are not impressed by it. I wanted to like the film, mainly to embrace the deeper concept Ritchie might try to say. As the credits rolled with sociological and psychological concept on ego, I wished it would have been shredded off to the bare minimum linear storyline with no ambiguity.

Understanding the film becomes a great exercise and I never was able grasp it completely. The base idea is clear but the journey is tedious and I repeat, unnecessary. Ritchie in an interview says to take it as an intellectual action film. Sounds gorgeous but in the sense it deflowered the script. When I watch this and the ending blooms on, there was considerable comparison for me with Arnofsky’s “The Fountain”, another painstaking film which grew as I watched the final moments again and again. I was not enthused on going back to “Revolver” to do the same. There is a significant distinction in the complications of both the films.

Technically very proficient and the fast-forward-rewind strategy of Ritchie is something I do not get bored of. There are trademark action scenes of Ritchie but everything falters under dubious script. One thing can be perceived as a positive note which is that Ritchie wants to advance into something more philosophical. And he appears to have the confidence in placing it in his similar styled crime and dark comedy genre which is his bedrock. But why does it have to be so cryptic? The film becomes a representation of the title character’s fight against his known and unknown enemies and it begins to fight us on our complete ignorance of the situation we are in.