RocknRolla

Director Guy Ritchie (aka Madonna's husband) has returned to making the kind of films that once earned him a reputation as a movie wunderkind (or whatever the Cockney version of that word is). RocknRolla, being given a limited release today (Wednesday), is receiving wildly mixed reviews. Kyle Smith in the New York Post calls the film "bloodily entertaining ... a sharp comedy as well as a punk-pulp spree." But Manohla Dargis in the New York Times comments that "Ritchie reshuffles a worn-out deck" with this movie. Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News describes the plot as "so uselessly convoluted, you'd get a headache just reading it." Liam Lacey in the Toronto Globe & Mail takes a middle position. The movie, he says, "is both a welcome return to form and a concession to Ritchie's limitations." Lacey is joined by Bob Strauss, who writes in the Los Angeles Daily News: "Sure, RocknRolla is overplotted, icky violent at times, and self-indulgent through and through. But it's clever, well-played and confidently presented." And Peter Howell in the Toronto Star concludes his review by noting that Ritchie "ends the picture by announcing a sequel -- but is that a threat, a boast or a faint hope? With Ritchie these days, you never can tell."