Now, I'm not a typical "testerone" viewer, I won't go watch any action movie that has big explosions or lots of death and destruction. I think this is a much more complex work for Ritchie than his previous work (i'm thinking of lock stock and snatch, rather than swept away.
I do acknowledge that it can be hard to follow at times. His plot is not executed a la Lynch, in that the "twists" aren't completely out on Mars, that if you follow the bread crumbs, you can find what you're looking. You just have to know what to look for.
Gold is a fiction, he does not exist, but everyone comes to believe that maybe they are gold. Gold is the greatest con every conceived (in the realm of the movie), in that people fear what they cannot see, and they'd rather die themselves than find out what this mysterious person has waiting for them. Stratham's fellow con men from prison reveal that even though thought he really didn't know as much as he thought he did. They know more than anyone else, because they had created the con in the first place. Get your opponent to believe that there is someone bigger, stronger, than you, and they either eliminate each other, or they eliminate themselves.
It's a bit of a stretch to get a general audience to get their head around this, especially in one viewing. And admittedly including anime for no reason was a bit odd, but just as much as it didn't fit in Kill Bill either. I don't claim to hold all the answers, but this is what I got from the movie. At times I was a bit lost as well, but it eventually clicked for me.
I do acknowledge that it can be hard to follow at times. His plot is not executed a la Lynch, in that the "twists" aren't completely out on Mars, that if you follow the bread crumbs, you can find what you're looking. You just have to know what to look for.
Gold is a fiction, he does not exist, but everyone comes to believe that maybe they are gold. Gold is the greatest con every conceived (in the realm of the movie), in that people fear what they cannot see, and they'd rather die themselves than find out what this mysterious person has waiting for them. Stratham's fellow con men from prison reveal that even though thought he really didn't know as much as he thought he did. They know more than anyone else, because they had created the con in the first place. Get your opponent to believe that there is someone bigger, stronger, than you, and they either eliminate each other, or they eliminate themselves.
It's a bit of a stretch to get a general audience to get their head around this, especially in one viewing. And admittedly including anime for no reason was a bit odd, but just as much as it didn't fit in Kill Bill either. I don't claim to hold all the answers, but this is what I got from the movie. At times I was a bit lost as well, but it eventually clicked for me.