Small time crooks Eddie (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Bacon (Jason Statham) & Soap (Dexter Fletcher) decide they have earned a break & thus come up with 100.000 Pounds & send Eddie to play Poker in Hatchet Harry's (P.H.Moriarty) club ... & of course, Eddie, whose main qualification for poker is that he can read faces, is cheated & not only loses everything but also ends up losing Hatchet Harry 500.000 Pounds, & he has only one week to pay, otherwise Harry's Henchman Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean), will cut his & his friends' fingers off, one for each day they do not pay.

Out of utter desperation, Eddie, Tom, Bacon & Soup come up with a really stupid plan to get the money: To hold up Eddie's neighbour Dog (Frank Harper) & gang (Steve Sweeney, Huggy Leaver, Tony McMahon), after they have held up Winston's (Steve Mackintosh) drugnest.

Everything almost goes wrong when Dog & company run into unexpected difficulties holding up the drugnest - including a few unexpected security measures - & are almost stopped by a traffic warden (Rob Brydon) & machine gunned by Winston's spaced out friend Gloria (Suzy Ratner), but ultimately they come home with the money and the drugs ... & are promptly robbed by Eddie & gang, wearing black skimasks & armed with knives & 2 antique guns ...

Dog swears revenge, it's just a good thing he doesn't know the robbers were his next door neighbours ...

However, robbing Winston's place sets a few things into motion, as Dog's fence Nick (Stephen Marcus) tries to sell the drugs to Rory (Vas Blackwood), the same man whom Winston made the drugs for in the first place. Hatchet Harry meanwhile badly wants the antique guns Eddie & company were using, since for collectors they are worth 250.000 Pounds a piece - but the boys bought them from Nick the fence, not a collector, for 700 both.

& then, when Eddie & company are out, Dog & company accidently find the money & drugs in Eddies appartmen ... & prepare to kill him & friends, just to teach him a lesson ... when Rory & gang appear for a friendly little shootout, that leaves both Dog's gang & Harry & gang dead. Only Dog escapes with the money & the antique guns, but runs right into the arms of debt collector Big Chris (Vinnie Jones) & son Little Chris (Peter McNicholl), who were just passing by to collect Eddie's debt, or alternatively break some bones ... & Big Chris, to some extent a man of honour decides to bring the money he finds on Dog - 500.000 Pounds exactly - to Hatchet Harry to settle Eddie's debt. And he brings him the antique guns too ...

So everything it seems would be fine, except maybe for thje fact that Eddie & company don't know about their luck yet, & are a bit worried about all the corpses & Eddie's & eddie's neighbour's flat, plus they think about how to explain everything to Hatchet Harry, but meanwhile 2 wannabe gangsters - having no idea who Harry is - try to steal the guns from Harry (which they have actually been hired to steal for Harry), but get shot - but not before they shoot Harry & his right-hand man Barry as well ...

Arriving at Harry's, Eddie & company find everyone dead, & the money and the guns ready for the taking (& they take both), but before they can drive away, Big Chris crashes his car into theirs accidently, & takes the 500.000 again ...

In the end, the boys have no more problems (since everyone else is dead), but also have gained nothing out of it all, except for the 2 guns, about the only things that can link them to the case, so they send Tom to throw them off a bridge ... shortly before Big Chris, still a bit of a man of honour, informs them about the guns' value ...

Sting plays Eddie's father.

Hard to believe rom today's (July 2005) point of view, but before director Guy Ritchie became almost exclusively known as Mister Madonna, he could direct & write funny genre movies, like this one here: a crime story with abn enormous amount of narrative strands that only meet occasionally, a big number of equally impiortant characters & unusual twists & turns around every corner.

& despite of all this the film remains stringent & highly entertaining throughout.

review � by Mike Haberfelner

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Robots and rats,
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cuddly toys and
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love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
is all of that.

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to -
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ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
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tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
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Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
the new anthology by
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On the same day
a Burglar wants to kill you
and your Ex wants
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WHICH IS WORSE!!!

A Killer Conversation

produced by and starring
Melanie Denholme
directed by
David V.G. Davies
written by
Michael Haberfelner
starring
Ryan Hunter and
Rudy Barrow

out now on DVD