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List Price: $14.94 | | Label: Sony Pictures
Salesrank: 2698
Released: March 18, 2008 |
| Our Price: $1.99 |
| Used Price: $1.35 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Director Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels) brings you this no holds barred urban, crime-thriller featuring an all-star cast of gangster movie icons including Jason Statham (London, Collateral), Ray Liotta (Goodfellas, John Q), Vincent Pastore (Made, TV's The Sopranos) and Outkast's André Benjamin (Idlewild, Four Brothers). Jake Green is a hotshot gambler, long on audacity and short on common sense. He's rarely allowed to play in any casino because he is a winner and has taken in so much money over the years. He is the only client of his accountant and older brother Billy. One night, Jake, Billy and their other brother Joe are invited to sit in on a private game, where Jake is expected to lose to Dorothy Macha, a crime boss and local casino owner who can't play for squat, but always wins because people are too scared to beat him. Jake isn't afraid of Macha, and not only beats Dorothy in a quick game of chance, but takes every possible opportunity to insult the man. Jake and his brothers leave the game, and Macha puts out the order for a hit on Jake, who ends up working for and being protected by a pair of brothers, Avi and Zack, who are out to take Macha down.
Description of Revolver:
This curious fourth film from Guy Ritchie returns the writer-director to familiar gangster territory following his disastrous remake of Swept Away, which starred Ritchie’s wife, Madonna. Jason Statham, a Ritchie regular, stars as an ex-convict named Jake Green, whose strategy for bankrupting a casino owner/crime boss named Macha (Ray Liotta)--whom Jake holds responsible for his incarceration--results in Macha ordering him killed. Enter a pair of other criminals (Vincent Pastore, Andre Benjamin) with a plan of their own, preventing the hit on Jake but telling him he has a fast-acting disease that will soon take its toll. From there, an increasingly convoluted gangster tale becomes a fascinating if often silly movie about Jake’s descent into possible madness while he simultaneously ponders the art of defeating one’s enemies and communing with God. Ritchie is indeed in a serious vein, but he doesn’t hold back on his unique sense of stylish fun, outfitting each character with memorable dialogue and behavioral traits. Standing out in a crowded pack of colorful underworld types is Liotta’s villain, who sympathetically conveys an all-too-human level of despair while wearing eyeliner and bikini underwear. The film becomes wearing after a while: Ritchie might be less interested in the crime genre than he once was. But there are plenty of fresh ideas here, even if they don’t always fit perfectly together the way Ritchie’s catchy debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, did. --Tom Keogh
Stills from Revolver (click for larger image)
Amazon.com Exclusive Interview with Jason Statham
We had the pleasure of talking with Jason Statham (The Transporter, Snatch, The Italian Job) about Revolver, his new film with director Guy Ritchie. Here’s a taste of what he had to say, and you can hear more in the February edition of the Amazon Wire Podcast.
Describe Revolver for people who have yet to see the film:
I would say it’s a movie that’s not to be confused with the likes of Lock Stock or Snatch if you have ever seen any of the previous Guy Ritchie movies, it’s not to be confused with that kind of a film. It’s a little bit more of a serious sort of psychological thriller… about being able to smash what controls you, but at the same time it’s all set within a world of ya know, violence, ya know that sexy shiny world that Guy Ritchie creates.
Do you see comparisons between Lock Stock, Snatch and this film as a good thing or a bad thing?
Well look, he’s made two terrific films, two great black comedies, do you want him to go and make another one as well? Sometimes you have to do something a little bit different… you can’t please everyone.
You’ve carried a lot of other movies, action movies, where there’s explosions and fast cars, but this film is really held together by your presence, and it’s a totally different mood. Did you you feel a lot of pressure on your performance as Jake to carry the picture?
Um, I mean, no, it’s best not to try and focus on that really. But obviously if you haven’t got your usual bells and whistles to rely upon, then you have to try and dig it out from somewhere else.
What did you draw from your own experiences in preparing for this movie?
You might know from reading other stuff that I used to work on street corners hustling, or conning people if you like, so I understood the psychology of that and what you need to do to make somebody sort of bend over and succumb to your will, it’s a very simple set of rules… there’s so many ways that you can be sort of lured down a certain road and it’s all about making decisions, and if you’re aware of what is leading you, you can make the right decision at the right time.
--Rachel, Amazon Movies & TV
Revolver Reviews:
Guess I should have seen the UK version 
2009-11-27 - Glad to read the other reviews here saying how much better the Brit version was, because this cut was rather boring and disjointed.
I love Statham in general, you can always sense humor under the tough veneer, and he's solid as always here. But the script is a little too impenetrable and this was cut very oddly, it seemed. Ritchie had a good concept that gets lost in the melee; I sure get tired of a new shoot 'em up every ten minutes. Violence is all too often a crutch for weak scripts and direction, and it sure is here.
The humor and knowingness of Lock Stock is gone, replaced by general confusion. Pastore and Benjamin add little to the proceedings, but I thought Liotta was good, if not used to perfection as in Goodfellas and others.
I'll have to find the UK version and give it another go. Statham and Ritchie are a fine team and worth another shot, as it were. The making-of doc shows them playing chess all the time, rather a surprise but pretty cool to an former chess hound like me. They mention, btw, that all the chess games in the movie were from classic matches, but there's a couple of board set-ups that are definitely not, like the one where q is on r5 early in the game. I'm pretty sure Capablanca or Alekhine were never using that opening, unless they were 3 at the time.
This cut of Revolver is close to special, but somehow never quite gets there.
Too many flashbacks, voice-overs and strange devices
2009-11-03 - The is awash in hard to follow flashbacks, inner character voices, animations, slow-motions, rapid cuts and time shifting. If you can get through all that, then the movie is some silliness about a revenge fantasy by the main character. Problem is the concept is way tooo hard to follow. The number of bad guys gets confusing, and the weird business about a fatal disease, loan sharks and the insufferable nonsense about high philosophies in defeating one's enemies gets on one's nerves long before it all comes to a merciful end. Also, the violence is bloodily graphic and sadistic. I guess Guy Ritchie was taking his Madonna frustrations out here.
The Prisoner for the ages 
2009-10-27 - This movie was confusing- but in a good way. In the beginning we see a man being released from prison, but really it's just exchanging one kind of prison for another. This movie takes you on a wild ride, but when it's over, you want to get back on the ride again to see what you missed the first time. I liked it.
Strange & twisted
2009-10-26 - Good movie, but only If you have a taste for strange not so coherent, mind puzzling histories.
I love Guy Ritchie's stuff, BUT ...
2009-10-23 - Yikes, THIS is a difficult flick to review! On the plus side there's a complicated but intriguing plot in which Jake (Jason Statham) is doing his best to stay a least a few steps ahead of the other players in what appears to be an exquisitely elaborate con game. And there's Guy Ritchies relentlessly hip, hyperrealistic visual style. But on the minus side, there's precious little of the humor that made previous Ritchie movies like "Lock, Stock" and "Snatch" so much fun. And WORST of all: Just when you think Revolver is finally going to come to some sort of satisfying resolution, the film completely jumps the shark in the last 15 minutes and becomes something trying to be far too clever and psychologically profound for its own good.
I do have to give Guy Ritchie credit for acknowledging, in an interview to be found in the DVD extras, some of the vitriolic reviews the movie got upon release. "Revolver" is not a bad film, the former Mr. Madonna has got a lot of talent, and upon repeated viewings and pondering this might ultimately be considered a pretty deep film wrapped in a violent, stylish package. But for a single evenings entertainment "Revolver" proves to be disappointing. Ill be generous and give it 3 stars anyway and HOPE that Ritchie redeems himself with "RockNRolla," which is next on my list of Guy Ritchie films to watch.
