A Double ‘Lock’ on Fame?

Guy Ritchie thinks his film is too long.

Never mind that “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” was a whopping hit in its native Britain ($19.3 million at the U.K. box office on a tight indie budget of $1.6 million). Never mind that its upcoming British video release will be the biggest one that distributor PolyGram has ever done. Never mind that the film so impressed Sony that the studio committed to the writer-director’s next picture, “Diamonds,” without reading a script. The man still says it’s too long.

“I could have lost two minutes off of it; I’m worried about that,” the 30-year-old filmmaker says, still perturbed. (For the record, the film is a brisk 1 hour, 48 minutes.) “At the last minute before the British release, I panicked that it was draggy, and I was up all night cutting 10 minutes. Everyone was horrified; the producer nearly slit his wrists. I’m the only director who wants to make his movies shorter.”

This devotion to energy and breakneck pacing is one reason why “Lock, Stock”--which will have its North American debut at Sundance tonight and is set to open in theaters in March--promises to dazzle audiences in this country as well. (The film is being released by Gramercy in the U.S.)

A whip-smart, deliciously complex entertainment about a quartet of young Londoners who get in over their heads with the local underworld and are forced to confront a rogue’s gallery of out-there desperadoes, “Lock, Stock” is dark, dangerous and a great deal of wicked fun. And to Ritchie’s eye, it shares traits with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” an early favorite of his: “What I loved about it was that it didn’t take itself too seriously; it struck a great balance between credibility and humor, which is what I’m interested in.

“I’m interested in films for numerous reasons, but first and foremost, I want them to be entertaining, and speed facilitates that,” continues Ritchie, who is as smart, personable and funny as his work would have you expect. “You want to make a commercial film with edge, like Sergio Leone or Quentin Tarantino--quirky and edgy, almost like an art film.”

Though there is enough of it in “Lock, Stock” to provide what he calls “backbone” for the script, Ritchie is not a fan of excessive on-screen violence, calling it “kind of tedious.” But villainy is something else.

“There’s nothing I enjoy more than a good story about a villain; people on the wrong side of the law are highly entertaining,” he says, warming to the subject. “Maybe it’s because they’re not conforming; they’re doing what we’re all sensibly scared to do. The whole job of intimidation is when to be funny and when not. These guys are actors; they know how to put on a show.”

So, despite his facility with crackling plot, Ritchie believes that character ranks with energy as an essential element of his filmmaking style. Calling villains in previous British gangster films like “The Krays” “intensely unintimidating,” he wanted his bad guys to be both believable and funny, to have what he called “weight,” and he cast “Lock, Stock” accordingly.

While the aptly named Hatchet Harry was played by “The Long Good Friday” veteran P.H. Moriarty, his key henchmen came through more unusual backgrounds. For Big Chris, Harry’s peerless debt collector, Ritchie chose British soccer star Vinnie Jones. “His disciplinary record left a lot to be desired; he broke all records for being sent off the field,” Ritchie reports. “Once he was sent off three seconds after the game began, no one’s come anywhere near that one.”

Even more unconventional was the history of Lenny McLean, usually known as “Big Len” or “the Guv,” who plays Harry’s enforcer, Barry the Baptist, named for his facility for drowning people. In real life, McLean (who died of cancer last year at age 48) had been Britain’s most renowned bare-knuckle boxer.

“No one would dare anything with Big Len. Everyone stood up when he walked into a room. It was very good for discipline on the set,” Ritchie reports. When a British reporter asked him if he’d ever studied drama, McLean, his director reports, replied as follows: “Listen, I’ve been in a thousand barroom brawls, been shot three times, stabbed more times than you’ve got digits. Don’t you think that’s enough drama for anyone’s life?”

Given how good he is at it, it’s surprising that Ritchie has been in the film business for only five years. He was inspired in part by meeting “a chap I’d been at school with who was a 24-year-old commercial director. That sounded flash; I thought, ‘I’ll have some of that.’ ”

Starting as a film runner, Ritchie took what he calls the best way into the British film industry: music videos (called promos), commercials, a short film and then a feature. “In my first year, I did 20 videos back to back, really crappy ones with sort of German rave bands. But there were advantages to that: The madder you went, the greater they thought it was.”

Ritchie, who views much of British cinema as “a bit woolly and wussy,” envisioned “Lock, Stock” as the opposite end of the spectrum to what he calls “Sunday films” like “The English Patient.” “If I wanted to indulge myself on a Sunday afternoon, that would be perfect. If it was a Friday night, I wouldn’t go see it; it’s too long in the tooth. We’ve all got busy, interesting lives; we don’t have that luxury.”

Instead, Ritchie envisioned a film for an untapped market: “In the U.K., no one makes films for the man in the terraces, the man who goes to football games [where the terraces are inexpensive seating]. Interestingly enough, a lot of toffs liked it, but I made it for the working man, which is not necessarily a big cinema-going demographic.”

Not surprising, especially since its key virtues include on-screen pizazz and irresistible acting, Ritchie and producer Matthew Vaughn had a great deal of trouble raising money based on the script alone. “It’s impossible to describe the story, with its pair of antique shotguns and everything else, without people nodding off within 30 seconds,” Ritchie says. “We got dropped more times than I want to remember.”

Once the film was made--executive producer Trudy Styler, whose husband, Sting, makes a cameo appearance, came on at a crucial juncture--”Lock, Stock” had similar trouble getting released. “We invited 15 or 17 British distributors, and a couple of them fell asleep,” Ritchie remembers. “Only one guy chuckled. We had hopes for him, but his company went bankrupt. The last to see it was Polygram, after everyone had sneered at it. They low-balled us, but we grabbed the offer with both hands.”

No such problems exist for “Diamonds,” which Ritchie describes as a bigger-than-life James Bondish-type thriller involving London’s diamond business. What does he think of Sony’s decision to sign on without seeing a script? “These guys were sensible,” the writer-director says, putting on his best deadpan manner. “They have vision.”

No matter what happens with “Diamonds,” Ritchie has already gotten a tangible benefit from his success. “Until this, I wouldn’t fly for 10 years. What happened? I grew up. I suddenly realized I had to. The concept of being a big-shot director eradicated that fear.”