"Revolver"

2005, directed by Guy Ritchie
written by Guy Ritchie and Luc Besson

Archived -
August 19, 2010

I watched the Guy Ritchie-Luc Besson flick Revolver over the weekend. I am a fan of actor Jason Statham as well as previous Ritchie cockney romps Snatch and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. But this flick was different. I had to watch it twice and I’m still not sure whether it falls into the so-bad-it’s-utter-genius camp, or whether it is the filmic runoff of a madman’s brain (uh, Besson, you have shown us your daffy brilliance before; can you say The Fifth Element, among others?). Either way, the movie is gorgeously photographed (filmed on location at a seaside resort in Britain). Every shot is jaw dropping in composition, lighting, color, and set design. Directors who offer up visions of what has rarely been seen before in cinema create a great viewing experience, in my opinion. But the script has to be tight as well.

Kicking off without any opening credits beyond the title, Revolver is a hard-boiled, dark contemporary revenge flick, akin to Payday or Get Carter, with a House of Games overlay to it. Statham — in atypical greasy black hair and beard—plays Jake Green, an overly successful gambler waging a war of retribution with casino boss Dorothy (Dorothy?) Macha, played by Ray Liotta, from whose establishment Jake once snagged his excessive winnings. From this premise, Jake and the film’s viewers are in for a series of brain-twisting shocks.

At the start of the flick Jake is sprung after seven years in jail and is now bent on getting even with the man who put him there. He’s about to launch a grand scheme against his nemesis -- who is also gunning for him -- when he literally tumbles into a trap laid for him by clever underworld “brothers” Avi and Zach, played by rapper Andre 3000 and The Sopranos’ Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore. (Does Ritchie have a thing for the name Avi? I recall that a character bore that name in Snatch as well.) Using metaphors from chess and classic con games—and the stunning revelation that Jake has somehow contracted a quick-killing fatal disease-- they make Jake a you-can’t-take-it-with-you offer he can’t refuse in which he must join them in their loan sharking operation using the millions he’s previously banked from his gambling – the same millions with which he’s only just been reunited. Jake is none too happy, as you can imagine, being that he has long-harbored plans for his dough, his archrival, and essentially the rest of his now foreshortened life. Hijacked, Jake goes along with the scheme though he still has it in for Macha.

Things get a bit convoluted. Jake is forced to dole out his own money to a series of losers and assist Avi & Zach in the increasingly violent collection efforts, all the while baiting and evading Macha’s minions. As played by Max Factor-eyed Liotta, Macha is all hissy fits and tightie-whitie crotch shots, as I guess the essence of portraying an Underworld Big Shot consists of running around a mansion in a variety of flimsy silk robes and Fruit of the Looms shrieking “I don’t care, just do it!” into the faces of other grown men. Chief among Macha’s dirty workers is the taciturn hitman Sorter, who bears not a small resemblance to the iconic operative Joubert from Three Days Of The Condor (Robert Redford flick from the '70s -- look it up). Like Joubert, Sorter is a tall ascetic with glasses who kills without compunction. Jake is on his lengthening list of marks, although he confusingly lets Jake slip away fairly often, to Macha’s increasing displeasure.

All of this plotting is, if not standard contemporary gangster film fare, still fairly well expected of Ritchie. But what makes this flick different is that it is extremely verbose, to Mamet-meets-Tarantino proportions, as Avi puts Jake – and Jake puts himself – through an existential funhouse of is-it-real-or-is-it-Memorex philosophizing on the nature of winning and losing, being and nothingness. There is much voiceover as Jake struggles to make sense of whether he is who he thinks he is, if he is in fact his own enemy, if he has a split personality, if everything that is happening is indeed happening, and whether he can win a game where the rules seem to be constantly changing.

In a bizarre series of developments, Jake becomes trapped by Macha’s men and the situation looks dire for our hero. Enter Sorter, who appears ready to deliver the coup de grace on Jake, but instead turns on Jake’s enemies and coolly dispatches them all as Jake escapes. Reeling from the confrontation, Jake now goes all New Age, Art of War counterintuitive by turning the other cheek on his arch enemy: giving money to charities in Macha’s name, then sneaking into the Big Man’s opulent bedroom in the wee hours and delivering a groveling, albeit armed, mea culpa at Macha’s bedside. What disgraces a man more than to be at the mercy of his enemy, only to have said enemy walk away? In other words, Jake has the opportunity to kill Macha while he sleepsnd doesn't, a fact that seems to destroy Macha mentally as we are served another shot of half-naked Liotta having a shuddering tear-streaked meltdown, repeating, impotently, “Fear me! Fear me!” as Jake brushes him aside. (Um, even the name Dorothy Macha is entirely emasculating, as this hard-to-watch emotional disintegration shows him to be a distinctly non-macho wuss.)

And so Jake — who discovers that his supposedly deadly blood disease was mysteriously misdiagnosed -- has won. It turns out that Avi & Zach have been his puppet masters all along, as they reveal themselves to be the two unseen yet beloved prison mates housed on either side of our hero during his seven year bid. In a twist reminiscent of The Usual Suspects, we learn that the two “brothers” – a master chess player and a master con artist -- have imagineered Jake’s labyrinthine post-prison journey, hinting at its progression and significance through chess maneuvers penciled into the margins of books they shared in the Big House, all in an attempt to continue an education they’d begun for Little Jake on the Ways Of the World -- or at least the Ways of the Big Con. And so there is celebrating all around, as Jake’s money and sanity are (we assume) restored, he is reunited with this Odd Couple of crime Yodas, and we the audience are left to sort through the psychic fallout.

While the film's title is a direct reference to a weapon, viewers are left to puzzle out the title's multiple meanings, including someone who or something that constantly revolves or spins; or even the Spanish meaning, which is to shake up or turn upside down. -- jc