Con man and master thief Jake Green (Jason Statham) is two years out of prison, has made himself a fortune and yet still can’t let go of the past. For him, he has to get what’s coming to him, and if that is going to happen then he is going to have to take down casino owner and mob boss Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta) at the tables to make it so.

Ray Liotta gets intense in Samuel Goldwyn Films' Revolver

And that’s where things get odd. A couple of strange loan sharks named Avi (André Benjamin) and Zach (Vincent Pastore) seem to have a strange interest in making sure Jake stays alive. They’ve laid out a serious of clues helping him avoid certain death, taking every single penny of his savings (as well as the money duped off of Macha) as they do so.

Sure it’s all a con of some sort the one-time jail bird decides to play their game and bide his time. But in the end nothing really is all it seems, and the biggest threat of them all might just be the one laying deep inside Jake’s own head.

I give Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch filmmaker Guy Ritchie credit for not retreating to the usual kiss kiss bang bang after the disaster which was his remake of Swept Away, but that doesn’t make his latest long-delayed effort Revolver any more of a head scratching blunder. For a good two thirds of the picture I found myself slowly hating having to watch it, waiting for the darn thing to end so I could go back out into the sunshine and do something more invigorating like stand in the middle of traffic or throw eggs at passing police car.

But then something remarkable happens. The last third of the film suddenly comes alive like nothing else before it, Ritchie bobbing and weaving the proceedings to a “Twilight Zone” sort of place I can’t really say I saw coming. While the picture itself is still nothing more than a colossal misfire, this turn of events is admittedly exhilarating and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wanting to rewind back thirty minutes or so and watch these final magical moments again. It’s not much but it is certainly something, and considering how little else of merit I have to talk about here I’ll take my good news where I can get it.

And I mean it when I say the rest of this thing is a nonsensical mess. An absurd combination of Stanley Kubrick, Robert Siodmak and Roger Corman, this film can’t decide what it is or what it wants to be. Some of the subplots here border on the almost comically asinine, some of it so obnoxiously silly it is almost as if Ritchie is parodying the very genre which made him at one point such a household name. Worse, it’s so brightly lit and so annoying shot parts of it started to give me a headache, and by the time it was over I had to take double the normal dose of Advil just to make it start to disappear.

Thank goodness the director at least knows how to cast well. No matter how silly all this gets (and it gets plenty silly) all of the actors invest far more of themselves into the material than it probably deserves. In fact, the chess scenes between Statham and Benjamin crackle with an electricity the rest of the film sorely lacks. I could almost watch them do their mischievous cat and mouse routine all the live-long day, and I kept wondering what my opinion of the film would have been had Ritchie spent more time focusing on them then he did trying to develop his borderline ludicrous head-trips.

Yet, I can’t really dismiss Revolver completely. The final act really is a deliriously stimulating corker, Statham getting a chance to electrify the screen like he’s never been given before. More, Ritchie is taking real chances here proving he’s got more on his mind then some street-smart dialogue and the dynamic firing of a few handguns. Like I said, it’s not much, but considering the alternative I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth no matter how absurd its neighing might actually prove to be.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  Interview with actor Jason Statham by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  Revolver Theatrical Trailer