RocknRolla (Blu-ray Disc)

While I didn't have much of a vested interest in the Super Bowl this year, I still watched the game between the Steelers and the Cardinals. Thankfully, this battle of teams I didn't care about proved to be a grabber, that furious comeback by Kurt Warner and the Cards ending up short-lived thanks to a great catch by Pittsburgh's Santonio Holmes making him an instant superstar.

Viewing Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla is a bit like watching the Cardinals during that game. After a weak start and a terrible misstep at the half-way mark, this crazed underworld action-thriller-suspense-comedy thunders back in the second half with skill and energy before flatlining in the last few minutes, with Ritchie dropping the ball just when his film needed him most.

RocknRolla is an unhinged freak-out highly reminiscent of Ritchie winners Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. It follows a pair of small time losers, One-Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba), as they try and put one over on a big-shot London gangster, Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), and a Russian crime lord, Uri Omovich (Karel Roden), in a million-dollar land swap deal. Also mixed up in the proceedings are an ice-cold accountant, Stella (Thandie Newton) and a pair of music moguls, Roman (Jeremy Piven) and Mickey (Chris Bridges), whose number one meal ticket (along with an extremely valuable painting) may or may not have sailed off into the great by and by.

The opening is a frenetic mess, but Ritchie rebounds after a few minutes and the story starts to come together into something potentially intriguing before a dance club dust-up nearly derails things completely. It's a mixed bag of chaos, laughter, stupidity and annoyance, and taken as a whole RocknRolla proves to be a consistently engaging visual smorgasbord that just doesn't know when to quit.

I have to say, I have a feeling the film is going to work a lot better on second viewing, especially after listening to Ritchie and actor Mark Strong's extremely engaging audio commentary. The pair help untwist all the intertwining narratives, and the frenetic pace of the piece while explaining the Ritchie's reasoning for cutting scenes in the fashion he did.

Additional extras include the now almost required digital copy, one additional scene that's almost worthy of remaining in the movie, the fairly standard making-of featurette "Blokes, Birds and Backhanders: Inside RocknRolla" and the simply marvelous "Guy's Town," a mini-doc with Ritchie talking about his love affair and fascination with the city of London. It's fairly standard stuff, but the studio's presentation is solid and none of these overstay their welcome to the point they become annoying.

I really loved Ritchie's first two films, both containing moments and performances I can't help but enjoy every time I watch them. I hoped RocknRolla's return to Ritchie's roots would allow him to craft another winner I'd want to add to my personal library. Unfortunately a series of mistakes keep it from attaining such a status.

It's a bit of a disappointment, and unless next summer's Sherlock Holmes proves to be a hit part of me can't help but feel that Ritchie's career, probably much like the Arizona quarterback's, might just be over.