The Revolving Release Date
“THE REAL ENEMY LIES WITHIN THE individual, and this is recognized by both psychiatrists and some of the more spiritual philosophies,” Guy Ritchie says at a roundtable interview, attempting to explain his new film, Revolver. “It’s that voice in your head. ... Whatever your weakness is—gambling, alcohol, drugs, women, or shopping—you want something that you know ain’t right but you gotta have it anyway. So is that voice you or is that someone who’s going to destroy you? That’s the con. It’s the ultimate con.”
To some, the ultimate con may have been the process involved in actually getting the film to American theaters. Directed by Ritchie, Revolver has had a bumpy road across the Atlantic, to say the least. Revolver was first screened at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005 and was released in Europe in November of that year. The response wasn’t positive.
“The film got annihilated by critics, and people didn’t get it at all, so it did very poorly in box office,” Ritchie says. Instead of giving up, however, he went to work and removed some confusing and tangential plotlines, and re-edited the ending. The American cut is now far more accessible, though nothing remotely close to clear.
Superficially, Revolver is just another gangster movie about greed, revenge, and exquisite cons, topped with a fair amount of very in-your-face violence. Jake Green (Jason Statham), a gambler and con man, is released from jail after seven years in solitary confinement and sets out to seek revenge on Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta). When Jake’s life is threatened after defeating Macha in a poker game, he is saved by the enigmatic Zach (Vincent Pastore) who, with his equally inscrutable partner Avi (André Benjamin), offer Jake protection. Against his better judgment, Jake accepts, and so begins the descent into the twisted world of conflicting interests of ruthless mob bosses.
Revolver is nothing like Ritchie’s two previous gangster flicks, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. This story is deep, dark, constantly mind-boggling, and loaded with symbolism. “I think it’s fun that films have depth,” Richie says. “I’ve left a whole snail trail of clues and symbols for those who care to indulge themselves.”
“This film is not necessarily as accessible as the other two movies,” Statham says. “I think the other two definitely had a broader appeal, because everyone wants a comedy that is lighthearted and doesn’t need to be taken too seriously. But this deals with something that is quite interesting, and if you do take it seriously it can change your life.”
The message sounds reasonable enough when laid out by the writer/director and the lead actor, but it is harder to appreciate when watching it for the first time. Unlike Ritchie’s previous endeavors, the film was shot mostly in a studio to convey a gambling-and-crime-zone setting. It’s a world that looks like a nightmarish hybrid of London, Las Vegas, and the darkest places of the mind.
The ensemble of gangsters is similarly eclectic. Jake Green is a typical British crook, with the heavy accent of London’s underworld. Macha is a casino-owing American mobster with his own tanning salon. Then, there is Lord John, who epitomizes Yakuza aesthetics, whereas Avi and Zach seem to be gangsters sent by God himself. “We wanted it to be a film about humans in general, about the human nature. That’s why it’s set in a no-man’s land, and it has this surreal quality to it,” Ritchie says, justifying the choices of radical angles, non-descript time and space, heavy filtering, and even the occasional cartoon sequence.
Ritchie is hopeful for the new edit, which opens Friday in the U.S. “I’m already getting better responses, 50-50, 60-40 even,” he says. “Two years ago, people left the theaters and said, ‘I have no idea what that film was about.’ Whereas now they can leave and say, ‘Oh, it was about this thing called the ego, whatever that is.’”
Pastrone also believes in the film’s positive reception this time. “I think that because of the success of The Sopranos, and the success of a lot of movies that come out that are trying to be like that, I think that people are gonna appreciate it a lot more than Europeans did. They like that stuff, they like to be pulled in different directions and having to analyze what they see.”
Granted there is a lot to analyze and digest. “You can’t take that all in in one sitting, so to be able to understand its point, you need to see it a couple of times,” Statham says, confessing, “I actually got the most of it when I watched it for the third time.”
According to Vincent Pastrone, though, that might be a good thing.
“I didn’t get Memento the first time I watched it,” he says. “Guy said, ‘We’re not making a movie for the average person to go see it and walk out and say ‘Oh, okay, happy ending, the guy got the girl.’ He wanted to make a movie for us to think and discuss. But there definitely is an audience for Revolver.’”