Love, Honour and Obey (2000)

I just love that this movie uses the real names of the actors, Jude, Ray, Johnny etc, so it's very cool. The main source of the humour comes from the the two bodyguards, one old and one young - mainly around the young guy trying sort out the old guys love life with his wife Kathy Burke. She then gets subjected to some of these suggestions which makes for great comedy.The violence stems from rival gangs and the characters in Ray's gang who are quite uncompromising. Ray asks one of them, who is in hospital, how he's doing - he says I've been stabbed by my own mate for a joke, burnt and force feed dog food - how do you think I feel?This is a movie to see and stack on the DVD shelf ahead of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels for a repeat viewing.

Painfully obvious that this was an "improv" effort. Event the most incompetently written script wouldn't have been this bad. Many fine actors were completely wasted. They repeat the same words over and over again. They were probably told the point a scene was supposed to make but just couldn't come up with the lines needed to make it seem natural. The cuts are awkward, almost as though this was supposed to be a series of vignettes. Was this because the improv scenes ended so badly they just had to be spliced together? There is a wisp of a plot, but the characters make very little sense, the sex jokes are astonishingly childish, and the humor is cruel, violent, amoral and not even a little bit witty. Nothing in the movie seems plausible, authentic or original -- it's a derivative collection of clichés. In terms of intelligence and humanity, any Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movie is David Lean's "Gandhi" compared to this appalling collection of scenes. Calling it a "movie" is generous.

For the most part this film is enjoyable, but sadly it's let down by it's indecisiveness. It cannot seem to decide what it wants to be - a brutal gangster flick or a comedy of errors. It ends up being a mixture of the two, but the brutality and the comedy do not make comfortable bed-fellows. A good example would be a scene where a thug is tearing the jugular out of a guy's neck with his teeth in an upstairs bathroom, while downstairs 3 gangsters are mincing around in aprons and marigolds. The film would have benefited massively from the humour being toned down. Also some of the cast seem to treating it like a project, and are hamming it up to ridiculous levels. Ray Winstone is the guiltiest, and loses any menace his gangland boss character may have acquired by giggling hysterically like a schoolgirl at a Twilight premier or laying the cock-er-ney slang on so thick that it comes across like a sketch from a Harry Enfield comedy. Sean Pertwee can also share his guilt. There are however some redeeming qualities to the film, the story moves along briskly, the soundtrack is wonderful and you're never short changed from quality performers like Kathy Burke, Rhys Ifans or Trevor Laird. An average film.

This film is about a man in London getting involved with a group of gangsters.This film, although is a gangster film, is in fact very funny. There are many subtle jokes and one liners in the film, which does make people laugh. The sets in the film are often simple, but it still looks thoughtfully created. The dialogs are very British, which could be an impediment for it to have appeal in the United States.Jude Law is a gem in the film, his character is memorable and remarkable.Another notable thing in this film is that, despite being a gangster film, it is not violent or gory. This is a big plus for non gore fans!