Misogyny is bad?

“Wussy-wushy scenes just bore the hell out of me. I just want them to get on and start bashing people up.” (Guy Ritchie in interview with the Daily Telegraph in, February 1999)

The more I get into my undergrad dissertation on the British crime film, the more often I find myself re-assessing my opinion of Guy Ritchie. Initially, he annoyed the hell out of me. I found his visual style amazing. He has such an eye for shots and exciting editing patterns. But, what always stood out was his cliched dialogue and 2-D characters. I began to loathe him (enough to rate him as bad as Nick Love). However, the more I read about him, and the more I watch his films, the more I like him.

I hated him so much that I bet Mike Glass (on his radio show Your Opinion Is Worthless – film reviews on a Monday from 3-5pm) that if the new Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes movie got 3 stars or more in a broadsheet that I would give him £100. But now, I love him. He’s misogynistic. He glamourises violence. I love that.

In the world of “New Men”, it’s refreshing that blokes can be blokes. That the sensitive men (the strong and silent type women like) and the emotionally intelligent man are actually NOT MEN! Men play football, fuck birds and drink beer. Fact. Blokes are no longer allowed to be blokes. So thank god Ritchie provides an escape to a nostalgic world of 1960s men. Men who shat on feminism. Men who could be vulgar and disgusting, but at least had some backbone.

I’m not trying to be contrary and get a reaction from the progressive and liberal among you. I just want to say that if we can have namby-pamby, indie films about emotions and feelings then why can’t we have “Guns ‘N’ Geezers”? If women can escape in fantasies about some Vampire kid, then why can’t men dream of a time when women were silent and men used violence to solve all their problems?

Paz

The ‘British Urban’ Cycle

Bullet Boy, Kidulthood, Adulthood, Rollin’ with the Nines; what do these films have in common? London, gangs, guns, crime and grime. If Ritchie’s movies are over-the-top Guns ‘n’ Geezers tripe. With a knowing smirk directed at the 1960s and more shallow postmodernism than you could shake a stick (or gun) at then the ‘British Urban’ Cycle is its antithesis.
With real locales, real characters, real stories and real concerns; the new breed of British crime film owes more to the late 1950s and early 1960s Kitchen-Sink drama than to any British crime film before it. London in these films isn’t even the East End. There’s no geezers running their manor from a backstreet pub. It’s kids in single-parent families living in North London just trying to get by. The parents lament their children joining gangs. These new criminals might not have the complete family unit but they have no need to turn to crime. They have material things (Nike trainers, Adidas tracksuits, BMXs) but crime is a sign of masculinity and brings honour, and respect, for your name.
So what are these films telling us? That London has a knife and gun crime problem, that gangs exist, that crime is about respect not money, that the pursuit of money is to facilitate the earning of respect, and that the only way to get that money is through dealing drugs, shooting thugs and not being taken for a bunch of mugs.
As longh as crime of this variety exists then the films will continue to follow. The four films mentioned at the top of this musing are (for my money) modern classics in the British crime genre. They are realistic, brutally violent and brutally honest. Performances are superb and they have encouraged the production of some the finest work in the grime scene. This may be the most important British crime genre cycle since the spivs.

Paz Bassra