Revolver

I don't have a paragraph worth of back story on this movie, the director or any of the actors, so I will just jump in with this one

Jake Green(Jason Statham) has spent seven years in jail, for some unknown crime, between a con man in the cell on one side and a chess master on the other. Back on the street, he walks into a casino run by his old enemy Macha(Ray Liotta) and wins a fortune at the table. Did he cheat, or what? I dunno. I don't even know what game they were playing. Macha soon sics some hit men on Green . Then two mysterious strangers Zach )Vincent Pastor and Avi(Andre Benjamin) materialize in Statham's life at just such moments when they are in a position to save it. Who, oh who, could these two men, one of whom plays chess, possibly be? They tell Green he is dying but they can help him if he gives them all of the money he has. They lend it out to needy people, well they are loan sharks and they make Jake a member of their crew. Macha has a bunch of drugs stolen that belonged to the main mob boss and he suspects Green and the Asian gang (yes, the Asian gang)so he sics even more men on Green. Green is often in his own head with an inner monologue trying to figure out what is going on, remembering the rules of cons he learned in Prison and for some reason he must repeat them over and over again.

At the beginning of the film a bunch of pseudo-Proverbs flash on the screen; most are about chess and cons. I am not sure why, but I guess they are meant to set up that we are watching a puzzle film and it will require all of our intelligence to figure it out. It doesn't require that much intelligence if you have a lot and it probably requires a lot if you don't have a lot. Trapped inside a bad script, a truly horrid and needless animation scene is a movie about ego. The inner voice Jake hears is his own ego prodding him to believe he can figure anything out. His ego has trapped him and the two mysterious men are there to help "free" him from that trap. They act as the Id, if you will. Yes, Freud does come up every so often in the movie. One could go as far as to say that the two men were only in Green's head, but since they did kill people, I can not fully buy that theory. But, beyond the pretentious philosophising is a fairly good movie.

Jason Statham is not a great actor, but he does this kind of stoic crazy thing well. Guy Ritchie (the director) doesn't trust any of the actors though. He is needlessly trying trick shots, weird colors, that animation sequence and some truly bizarre editing, although the editing of the scene where the hit man is in the apartment complex is excellent. Ray Liotta plays his character too true to what a real mob boss would be, which is cool, but I think he needed to be more over the top to match what Ritchie was doing in terms of sticking Liotta in a giant tanning room with speedo underwear and only speedo underwear. I didn't know what to expect going in and what I got was this movie that was trying to be bigger, badder and better than it actually is. The theme of controlling one's ego gets lost in all of the unnecessary flashbacks and flash forwards. The crazy editing, noisy soundtrack, random subtitles and constant voice overs repeating the rules of a con keep Revolver from being a totally fun movie.

Final Grade: C