Remember our prescient post back in May about Guy Ritchie‘s stalled career?
We asked where the filmmaker had disappeared to, we bemoaned the fact that his 2005 “Revolver,” was never properly released in the U.S. (we have a copy and haven’t even bothered yet), recapped how it was allegedly so terrible it couldn’t even find a proper North American release and then just mere days later it was announced that Ritchie was coming out of hiding to direct “Rock N Rolla” – yet another caper heist film which stars Gerard Butler, Jeremy Piven and Ludacris. [ed. Let’s not forget his bomb “Swept Away” too]
Anywho, as we briefly, briefly mentioned earlier this month, “Revolver” is finally getting a belated release, very quietly it seems, on December 7. To briefly recap, the film – which stars Jason Statham, Ray Liotta and Outkast’s André Benjamin 3000 received scathing reviews and as we mentioned, couldn’t find distribution, so it never came and went and that seemed to be the end of the story.
But apparently Ritchie’s wife, the rather famous Madonna, used all those yoga muscles and flexed whatever power she could to get the thing finally released in the U.S., including throwing a star-studded U.S. party this weekend to drum up some attention. Apparently Ritchie has recut the film (which was originally criticised as being “too difficult to follow” -the film’s big underlying theme is “Fight Club” like duel between the Ego and Id and sounds pretty confusing) and presumably changed the soundtrack (which instead of a rock n’ roll-fueled soundtrack like he usually does, used an experimental fusion original score that fans didn’t care for)? Who knows, but that might be a safe bet (a soundtrack disc was released in the U.K. only).
So yeah, 2 years after the fact, “Revolver” is finally being released. Call this a salvage project. If you’re interested it comes out in limited release on December 7. Whether it expands further than that into not the New York and L.A.’s of the world likely depends on how well it does.
Update: We saw the original version on DVD this weekend. Honestly wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be, but yes it was slightly confusing (although ambiguity is generally a good thing in our book). Now do we go pay to see it in theaters to see what the differences will be? Undecided, but we’re curious. Also, we’re sure they’re not going to change the soundtrack, that was just speculation on our part. Or at least, we’d be really suprised if they did, it seemed to work in our minds.
“Revolver” trailer