That Guy Ritchie, he�s a right tasty geezer. There we were, expecting him to pull the job of the century and not deliver just another Mockney opera, and what does he do?

Star rating:**
Dir: Guy Ritchie
With: Gerard Butler, Idris Elba, Tom Wilkinson

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That Guy Ritchie, he's a right tasty geezer. There we were, expecting him to pull the job of the century and not deliver just another Mockney opera, and what does he do?

Welcome back to a world of effin this and effin that, cheesy nicknames, designer violence, designer threads and more rhyming slang than you can shake a clickety click at. After the misfire of Revolver and the frankly criminal Swept Away, the only surprise is that it finds Mr Madge back on half-decent form.

With a cast so numerous they should be wearing numbered jerseys so the audience can keep up, it's a story with more flash than original dash. One of London's crimelords, played by Tom Wilkinson, is trying to do business with the invading Russians, all of whom want to be "rocknrollas" - rule breakers who do everything to the max. Helping Wilkinson is wartime consigliere Mark Strong, while hindering matters are small-timers Gerard Butler and Idris Elba. Tending to everyone's accountancy needs is Thandie Newton as smart, foxy Stella. Newton also performs the essential task in any Ritchie movie of looking fabulous while wearing a tight skirt and walking in slo-mo.

Slick as it is, there's a dirty great problem with RocknRolla - it's all a bit 10 years ago. In Ritchie's glittering city of new money and modern architecture, characters still think there's easy cash to be made from property. It gets worse. Do any bad boys still use terms like "wicked", last heard on Grange Hill circa 1985? As for the cringeworthy attempts at jokey banter when someone turns out to be gay, that was presumably lifted lock, stock, from a playground in the Seventies.

Injecting freshness into the mix is Toby Kebbell, playing a crackhead pop star given to standing around posing while The Clash plays in the background. Otherwise, it's just more of the same from Ritchie: occasionally amusing, unapologetically laddish, he's on enough of a roll by the end to cue up a sequel involving some of the key characters. Should he get his wish London, by then, will have changed and changed again. Hopefully the same can be said for the director.