Vinnie Jones is a cultural phenomenon. If you're scratching your head, don't worry; it's not our culture he's a phenomenon in. Before making his acting debut as a rifle-wielding goon in the new crime caper Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Jones was a British soccer star — a really dirty soccer star. In fact, there's an infamous photo of Jones that was splashed across London's cheekiest tabloids a decade ago, in which the sneering poster boy for Rude Britannia was caught red-handed grabbing and twisting an opposing player's twig and berries during a match.
Naturally, whenever Brits try to describe Jones to Americans, they use the transatlantic translation ''He's our Dennis Rodman.'' But truth be told, Vinnie Jones makes Dennis Rodman look like an amateur. While Rodman routinely flies to Las Vegas to hit the craps tables, Jones missed his first day on Lock, Stock for reasons with a bit more street cred — he was in jail, reportedly for beating the stuffing out of his neighbor and biting his scalp. ''Vinnie showed up on the set in this white paper suit, which is the uniform they give you in jail here,'' says Lock, Stock director Guy Ritchie. ''It's f----ing funny now, but at the time it was quite scary.''
Easy for Ritchie to laugh — after all, his dizzying, dazzling indie import about four lads who get caught up in the East End underworld has since raked in more than $20 million in its native U.K. Still, at the time, the 30-year-old music-video director with the long scar across his face had to be second-guessing his plan to pepper Lock, Stock's cast with real-life tough guys like Jones and Lenny McLean — a gravel-voiced Doric column of a man, better known as Britain's bare-knuckle boxing champion before he died last year.
''For so long, British films have been about tea and cake and posh girls getting married,'' says Nick Moran, who plays Eddie, one of the film's four lead lads. ''Guy just never bought all that E.M. Forster s — -.'' Adds Ritchie: ''I just wanted to make something a bit more contemporary than f — -ing Shakespeare. And I definitely didn't want any Royal Shakespeare actors pretending to be lads — that would be so transparent and sad.''
As you can probably tell from the Lock, Stock posse's dash-happy vocabulary, there's no tea or cake in Ritchie's film — and certainly no posh girls. In fact, there are virtually no girls at all. Instead, there are guys: guys shooting guns, guys swilling beer, guys scheming to steal money. It's like a cross between a tough-talking, he-man frat party and an MTV-age homage to the down, dirty, and dapper Michael Caine movies of the '60s and '70s like Get Carter, Alfie, and The Italian Job.
In other words, while Lock, Stock is on its surface a byzantine heist flick, at its heart the movie's about what the British have recently dubbed laddism — that particularly cockney ethos of lager and soccer currently being dumped on our shores in the pages of men's magazines like Maxim. ''People are talking about this 'lad' thing like it's some sort of new phenomenon,'' says Moran. ''But I guess maybe America just doesn't have lads. At least with us it's the real thing rather than some designer Gucci version.'' If you're wondering if this whole laddism thing will play in the States, consider that no less a fashion barometer than Madonna has already been linked with Lock, Stock's director in gossip pages on both sides of the pond. Demurs Ritchie: ''The deal is, we're friends. I have a great deal of respect for her work and I believe she appreciates mine. She's a great girl.'' Despite the gentlemanly answer, Ritchie got into a bar fight recently with Madonna ex Andy Bird over the Material Girl.
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