Rock N Rolla is vintage Ritchie, a multi-stranded ensemble film revolving around a motley assortment of London thugs, gangsters, dealers and other unsavory sorts all shot with a blazing sense of style, obvious affection and pitch black humor. The dialog crackles, the violence is simultaneously apalling and deeply amusing, characters are richly detailed, and the underworld painted with a bursh by turns glamorizing and grittily realistic. What Ritchie does when he is on his game - and he is very much on his game here - is create the sort of stylish crime romps that Soderbergh aims for with his Oceans films, only far more violent, crude, and stylish. His characters are rogues, yes, and dangerous and violent but nevertheless lovable.

It's been years since Ritchie tried his hands at this sort of thing and the man has grown up and experienced whole new worlds since last time out and so it's only fitting that his criminals have changed as well. Gone are the days of petty theft and gambling halls. In their place the far more lucrative world of real estate speculation, a dirty world where those who control the politicians win big and nobody wins bigger than Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), an old-style gangster who lords over the city through a mix of bribes and violence. Nobody gets anything done without Lenny being involved and when Lenny is involved Lenny takes a cut. Or, at least, that's how it used to be but times they are a-changin' and the arrival of Russian money in town means Lenny's days may be numbered. Also in the mix? A group of aspiring up and comers known as the Wild Bunch, led by Gerard Butler's One Two, under Lenny's thumb until they can get out from under a debt that Lenny himself orchestrated, plus the beautiful accountant bilking the Russian billionaire dry while toying with One Two's affections. And then there's the wild card ... Lenny's step son, drugged out punk rocker Johnny Quid. Throw them all into a big pot, stir it up a bit, and follow the trail of the lucky painting and there you have the world of Rock N Rolla.

When Ritchie's films work they work, in no small part, because of his characters and that is absolutely the case here. The ones named above are only the principals, the complete cast of players ranges much farther - Chechnyan mercenaries, American music agents, an assortment of junkies, etc - and the entire line is impeccably cast. Butler and Wilkinson are stellar as One Two and Lenny, respectively, the hot-and-cold Thandie Newton fits into Ritchie's world shockingly well as the femme-fatale accountant, Karel Roden is the perfect embodiment of elegant menace as the Russian billionaire, and the list just goes on and on and on. Every casting choice is flawless with nary a weak performance to be found with veteran support player Mark Strong, in particular, turning in what should be a star-making performance as Lenny's lieutenant Archy.

Though Rock N Rolla never quite reaches the same giddy heights that both Lock Stock and Snatch hit in their key moments it certainly isn't for lack of trying and, on the flip side, Rock N Rolla is a far more confident and self-assured film than either of its predecessors. So while the peaks may not be as high the valleys certainly aren't as deep, either, the end result being a film that ends up ranking somewhere between Ritchie's debut and sophomore effort. And that aint a bad place to be at all.