Plot
Four London working class stiffs pool their money to put one in a high stakes card game, but things go wrong and they end up owing half a million pounds and having one week to come up with the cash.

Release Year: 1998

Rating: 8.2/10 (185,138 voted)

Critic's Score: 66/100

Director: Guy Ritchie

Stars: Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Nick Moran

Storyline
Four Jack-the-lads find themselves heavily - seriously heavily - in debt to an East End hard man and his enforcers after a crooked card game. Overhearing their neighbours in the next flat plotting to hold up a group of out-of-their-depth drug growers, our heros decide to stitch up the robbers in turn. In a way the confusion really starts when a pair of antique double-barrelled shotguns go missing in a completely different scam.

Cast:
Jason Flemyng - Tom
Dexter Fletcher - Soap
Nick Moran - Eddy
Jason Statham - Bacon
Steven Mackintosh - Winston
Nicholas Rowe - J
Nick Marcq - Charles
Charles Forbes - Willie (as Charlie Forbes)
Vinnie Jones - Big Chris
Lenny McLean - Barry The Baptist
Peter McNicholl - Little Chris
P.H. Moriarty - Hatchet Harry
Frank Harper - Dog
Steve Sweeney - Plank
Huggy Leaver - Paul

Taglines: They lost half a million at cards but they've still got a few tricks up their sleeve

Release Date: 5 March 1999

Filming Locations: Bethnal Green Town Hall, Bethnal Green, London, England, UK

Box Office Details

Budget: £960,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend: £941,638 (UK) (30 August 1998) (222 Screens)

Gross: $3,650,677 (USA) (23 May 1999)

Runtime: 107 min  | 120 min (director's cut)

Trivia:
Cameo: [Matthew Vaughn] The film's producer appears as the yuppie dragged out of the car by Dog.

Goofs:
Revealing mistakes: As Tanya, the dealer, is explaining the game of Three Card Brag she completes the initial deal. She accidentally exposes the bottom of the deck which would be visible by all players as a 7 of diamonds. This should have resulted in a misdeal.

Quotes:
[first lines]
Bacon: Right. Let's sort the buyers from the spyers, the needy from the greedy, and those who trust me from the ones who don't, because if you can't see value here today, you're not up here shopping. You're up here shoplifting. You see these goods? Never seen daylight...
[...]

Seriously addictive movie - The most balanced movie ever made?

Rating: 10/10

The first time I saw this movie I had difficulty in understanding a lot of the dialogue not just because of the weird accent, but because the actors spoke so damn fast. But despite this I became literally addicted to it. To begin with my wife got pretty annoyed because any other movie we rented would be ejected after about 20 minutes of viewing and in would go LS&2SB. Now she is hooked as well.

I have lost count of the number of times I have seen LS&2SB and still cannot put my finger on why I find this movie so good to watch. I suppose the most obvious feature of this movie is that it is beautifully balanced between being serious and humorous at the same time. The characters are two-dimensional. The villains are menacing, and yet they are made to look like idiots, and the good guys think they are so smart yet keep getting the rug pulled from under them. They are all projected as 'cool' yet the situation is always out of their control. Maybe it could be called a satire on true life.

The style of this movie is unique, full stop. I cannot think of any movie that can be compared to LS&2SB. Quite a few people say that the style is a mix of 'Pulp Fiction', 'Goodfellas', 'Trainspotting' and 'Reservoir Dogs', but I think that you would make that kind of description only if you are really desperate to match LS&2SB to something.

The best description I can think of is 'MTV does a crime comedy', and I honestly don't think there is anything wrong with that. Like music videos, it is all non-stop movement and sound. Something is always happening but unlike music videos, not without reason.

The humor is incredibly sharp yet 'as a matter of fact'. No one is really trying to be extraordinarily funny, but again it is the balance between being menacingly serious and funny that the humor really flies at you. I think that it is for this reason that a few people are really disappointed with LS&2SB. If you are expecting a 'belly laugh Leslie Nielson, Jim Carrey, Steve Martin, typecasted' type all out comedy, or a serious 'Al Pacino, Andy Garcia, DeNiro typecasted crime thriller, you will find this movie a big let down.

My favorite characters are Rory Breaker (Vas Blackwood) and Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) mainly because their two dimensional over-the-top characters are the most obvious. Big Chris takes his son with him debt collecting, and while he beats up someone who owes chastises him for swearing in front of his son and Rory Breaker is the most idiotic drug-lord you could come up with.

I haven't even mentioned the excellent and unique camerawork, speaker blowing soundtrack, beautifully threaded plot, perfect ending and the grittiest visuals I've seen. You wont see any reflective glass laden sky scrapers here, or 'over head city shots', or incredible special effects. This movie has actors I have never heard of, dialogues that you have to rewind and replay to understand, buildings that look as though they have been condemned for demolition, cars that wouldn't even be seen in our scrap yards, has probably been made with a budget that most movies in Hollywood use for make-up alone, has no love scenes, or romance or complex relationships, no Oscar-worthy performances, and yet is perfect entertainment.

Where our movies normally rely on budgets, this movie works on human talent alone.

If any movie deserves a 10 out of 10, then this is it.

'And there's one more thing...............it's been emotional'

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