RocknRolla

Writer-director Guy Ritchie romps again through the London underworld, in another Cockney-accented Pulp Fiction much like his previous films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. This time his loopy story involves a gang kingpin (Tom Wilkinson), a Russian billionaire (Karel Roden), an ice-queen accountant (Thandie Newton), two small-time hoods (Gerard Butler, Idris Elba), and others too numerous, too quirky and too outlandish to be worth trying to keep straight. If you haven’t seen the previous films, you’ll probably get more of a charge out of this one; otherwise, it may strike you as a shopworn magic act you’ve seen before, the same tatty old tricks jumbled around to make them look fresh. To switch metaphors, this field is farmed out; Ritchie should consider rotating in some new crops.