"Imagine getting stuck on a ski lift with Dr. Phil for nearly two hours. "

Clicking through Orr’s top-10 list I saw his review of Guy Ritchie’s Revolver. I didn’t really investigate it other than skimming what seems to be the charitably lukewarm NYT review; even knowing nothing about it having been on the shelf for two years, seeing the horrifying credit “written by Luc Besson” was enough to keep me well away from the theater. And hence, I had no idea that it turns out to be a pretentiously-cut gangster movie overlaid extensively with…reams of pretentious New Age horseshit. Without meaning it as a joke. It seems to fall into the category of “almost but not quite bad enough to warrant Netflixing”:

Gradually, one begins to suspect that this movie thinks it has Something Important to Say and, unfortunately, it does. (A spoiler follows, though trust me, this is something you’ll want to know before deciding to shell out your eight bucks.) As the film progresses, Green’s homily-spouting voiceover becomes ever more intrusive before ultimately blossoming into a full-blown attack of schizophrenia in which he bickers, Gollum-like, with his own dark side in a stopped elevator. The lesson, you see, is that his only real enemy is his ego, and not the fellow with the gun waiting outside the elevator to kill him.

And, indeed, when the doors open the anticipated showdown is less climax than coda, as the newly enlightened Green strolls right past his would-be assailant, who is paralyzed by his own insecurities. For viewers thick (or incredulous) enough not to get the message, Ritchie helpfully provides, as the credits roll, a series of brief psycho-spiritual testimonials in which luminaries such as Leonard Jacobson and Deepak Chopra explain, “The ego is the worst confidence trickster, because we don’t see it.”

Wow–so it’s sort of Smoking Aces meets Johnathan Livingston Seagull, in dead earnest. And the sad thing is, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was pretty entertaining, although certainly one can see many signs of potential for unimaginable wankery in it.