The Guy Ritchie movie his mother hated with a passion: “She was very upset”
If you have a look over Guy Ritchie’s filmography, it’s not difficult to figure out which one would have offended his mother.
With its foul language, excessive depiction of drugs, and use of a big purple dildo as an offensive weapon, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels isn’t a movie you’d be happy to watch with your parents in the living room.
The film follows an over-confident card sharp who enlists a colourful gang of friends to help him rob a small-time gang to pay off his gambling debts to ‘Hatchet’ Harry. The comedy gangster film is frenetic, outrageous and filled with cockney accents, hard men and a much more American approach to its subject matter.
Considering the film was Ritchie’s directorial debut, which was destined to catapult him out of obscurity, he had no real choice but to show it to his mum. Most of us dream of the day we can show our parents the result of our years of hard work, but it must have come with a bit of a caveat for Ritchie, especially considering his mum is a lady, and that’s not in any figurative sense.
Yes, Ritchie might make movies about the lower echelons of British society, but his upbringing was anything but, as after his parents separated, they both ended up marrying into the aristocracy, where his mother was betrothed to Sir Michael Leighton, 11th Baronet of Loton Park, making her Lady Leighton.
It was bad enough imagining a somewhat hardened but still sweet cockney lady watching Lock, Stock, but it’s even more ridiculous considering a proper lady doing the same, so it’s no surprise she hated it.
“Guy showed the film to his mother, and she was very upset with some of the language,” editor Niven Howie told The Independent, “so a lot of the egregious dialogue was cut”.
So you’re telling me that a) the language in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was originally even more foul? And b) Ritchie toned it down because of his mother? The film carries an 18 certificate in the UK, so really, the language is already considered pretty bad, alongside the violence and crime, of course, but honestly, it’s hilarious to consider Ritchie having to mind his p’s and q’s because of his mummy. Can you imagine the stick the cast must have given him? Because I can, and believe me, there’d be some colourful language involved there.
Regardless of the concessions made for his mum, Ritchie’s film skyrocketed him to fame and launched a whole new approach to moviemaking in Britain, so not only did his foul film make it into the world despite his mum’s protestations, but it was also a trigger for impressionable young filmmakers everywhere. Whoops!
