When an action-packed crime thriller with a star-studded cast hailing from a well-known and highly successful director ends on the promise of a sequel, fans would understandably expect said follow-up to materialize eventually. It’s been 14 years since Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla was released, though, so we can probably rule this one out from ever happening.
Which is a shame, because it was exactly the recharge the filmmaker’s creative batteries needed after the back-to-back disasters of Swept Away and Revolver. Hollywood came calling for Ritchie in the end, with any plans for The Real RocknRolla put on the back burner after the writer and director became preoccupied with Sherlock Holmes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and Aladdin.
The typically labyrinthine plot follows a pair of hapless small-time criminals who end up out of their depth and in huge debt to an infamous gangster, who himself is engaged in a shaky business deal with Russian criminals. From there, various plot threads and offbeat characters criss-cross and collide in an effort to secure a serious financial windfall.
Gerard Butler, Toby Kebbell, Thandiwe Newton, Mark Strong, Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, Gemma Arterton, Ludacris, and Jeremy Piven are just some of the names to drop by RocknRolla, with the irreverent romp barely securing a Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes after winding up right on the 60% threshold.
Over 50,000 audience members deemed it worthy of a 71% score, and many of them must have been revisiting the black comedy caper on streaming this week, based on its performance. As per FlixPatrol, RocknRolla has indeed been rocking and rolling up the Netflix most-watched list, and could be on its way into the overall Top 20.