Although through his films it may seem that Guy Ritchie was a lout from the London’s East End, in actuality Guy was the son of a very successful advertising executive. Following his parent’s divorce Guy spent much of his time at his baronet stepfather’s 17th century home. At school he suffered greatly down to his dyslexia and the expulsion from Sibford School down to drug abuse, the result was leaving school at 15 only to become a labourer with a single GCSE in film studies, and a black belt in karate. At the age of 25 he found his call in life… a film director. In 1993 Guy began as a film runner eventually turning to directing German music videos. The year in which he directed these music videos he learnt how to use the camera and various other aspects of filmmaking to great effect with this knowledge he went on to direct a few commercials until he had his break by directing a short 20 minute film named ‘The Hard Case’ (1995). The airing of the short-film on channel 4 caught the eye of a Sting who at the time happened to be married to Trudie Styler who would later play the role of executive producer to Guy’s debut film ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ (1998) in which sting would play a small role.
Guy Ritchie’s interpretation of the gritty East End of London and its crooks became that year’s greatest successes in the U.K. Although in the U.S box office it didn’t do as well as expected. Aside from that the film didn’t run short of humorous and clever plot twists with the creation of some great characters from Big Chris, a hitman played by the machine like Vinie Jones, Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty) to Barry the Baptist (Lenny McLean). The film involved various clever techniques one of them being preventing the viewer from exposure to bloodshed by showing many of the acts of violence of camera and still conveying the consequence of the actions. His greatly proclaimed first picture left an opening for his second film ‘Snatch’ (2000) in which a return to the...