Next Day Air (2009) - by Faro

In 1998 Guy Ritchie wrote and directed the crackling action/caper/comedy Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. We were all very amused, and happy to find out that some one other than Quentin Tarantino could make a violent and funny movie with a great soundtrack. Then in 2000 he wrote and directed Snatch. The title was a little bit less imaginative, a little bit forced, and overall just not quite as much fun... and that kinda sums up the movie as a whole.

For some strange reason Guy decided his next artistic project was to try fucking Madonna for a while... not just in bathrooms which would be totally understandable, but in an actual marriage bed with vows and children and everything. Eventually that ended, and in 2008 he wrote and directed RocknRolla, which no one even saw, so we don’t even really know what to think about that, but its probably some sort of pale facsimile of his first film... which if you are in that sort of mood might not be a bad thing, but its not gonna knock your socks off your barrel, if you know what I mean.

Then this year from first time film director Benny Boom comes Next Day Air, which is just a copy of a copy of a copy of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. You can hear the pitch now... it probably went something like this:

“You know what was funny... do you remember that movie Guy Ritchie did before he got boring and married Madonna?”

“Oh yeah, that was a good movie.”

“So here’s what I’m thinking... we'll redo that movie, but we’ll set it up in an American inner city. The protagonist won’t be pushed on by his dad, we’ll switch that around and make it his mom. And we’ll change the central location of the bar to a mail delivery company, because Tom Hanks proved that American audiences love movies with mail delivery workers. We’ll make sure to have multiple groups of people whose stories keep interweaving cause that’s what the original did and because Crash totally legitimized that style of narrative, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, totally!”

“And we’ll keep that funny bit where the clueless guys decide they need to buy guns to get into the game. And instead of slightly threatening white guys with indecipherable accents we’ll put in unthreatening black guys who are stoned all the time. But the weed will be a red herring, cause this time the drug that will be stolen will be cocaine. And hell, lets even keep that scene where a house is being barged into and someone unfamiliar with guns steps up with a fully automatic weapon and shoots up the entire room!”

“Awesome!... but can’t we get in trouble for doing the exact same movie again, but just making it dumber?”

“Nah, even Guy Ritchie’s films are just imitations of past classics like The Sting and Pulp Fiction... and do you remember Achtung Baby?

"Yeah... but what the hell does that album have to do with what we are talking about?”

Every artists is a cannibal - every poet is a thief,

All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief.

“Can you use lyrics as legal defense?”

“Sure, why the hell not? And Bono is practically a judge now, or a senator, right?”

“Cool... then let’s do this thing.”