Good grief. Where to begin? I so wanted to believe that the venomous American reviews for Guy Ritchie’s latest venture were borne of Madonna begrudgery. Say what you like about Mr. And Mrs. Ritchie's efforts in Swept Away, but when one stripped away the appalling dialogue, bewildering tonal jump cuts, dreadful acting, lazy direction and sexual politics that would’ve embarrassed Sid James (rape equals love – yuk) there remained the cute notion of a newly married couple’s in-joke the rest of us just didn’t quite get.
If anyone, up to and including those who receive special messages from Jesus during weather forecasts, gets anything at all about Revolver, I’d be terrifically surprised. Frankly, it’s the most godawful mess of this or any other year. Jason Statham – Ritchie’s other muse – stars as a conman released after a seven-year stretch and seeking revenge on the kingpin bloke (Ray Liotta, shameful) what put him inside. When they finally catch up, Statham defeats Liotta at the casino tables and then gets poisoned, only to be saved by the mysterious Zach (Pastore) and his partner Avi (Andre Benjamin, best thing in it but still not emerging ice-cold).
It transpires that there’s this perfect con. No, wait. It’s something about chess and the Kaballah. Or is it Machiavellian numerology? And what are these oriental gangsters doing here? Achieving the kind of incoherence that would make any low-rent underground film student swell with pride, Revolver stages pop-metaphysical metaphors between baffling exchanges of fortune cookie non sequitors. (“The eyes are open and the restaurant’s closed”). For sheer garbage dialogue, only this year’s What The Bleep Do We Know? comes close.
Presumably Mr. Ritchie is going for avant-garde with all this. The end credits are left enigmatically blank, although that may be because no-one wanted to put their name to it. At a stretch, or with an actual revolver pressed to the temple, you might praise the imagined trans-Atlantic set design, but rarely is cinema this awful, baffling or pointless.