YMMV / Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels

• Awesome Music: The soundtrack:
  • The seriously funky bassline that serves as the main lads' theme music.
  • Ed and Bacon fleeing the police to "Hundred Mile High City" Ocean Color Scene.
  • Big Chris is introduced to "The Boss" by James Brown. Speaking of which, "Payback" is played when Ed and Tom enter Harry's office.
  • Ed losing the poker game to "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges.
  • "Spooky" by Dusty Springfield is played when Barry the Baptist hires the Scousers to steal the shotguns.
  • The lads' party scene is set to "Walk This Land" by E-Z Rollers
  • "Zorba's Dance" plays during the Lock-and-Load Montage and the subsequent gunfight.
  • "Fool's Gold" by The Stone Roses is played when the lads try to stop Tom disposing of the guns.
• Catharsis Factor: Granted, neither are what you'd call good people but there's no denying that Dog getting his comeuppance for threatening Big Chris' son is very satisfying.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Big Chris is more of a secondary character, but his popularity made the character a Star-Making Role for Vinnie Jones. Put it down to being a tough Anti-Villain with some humorous Not in Front of the Kid moments.
  • Winston, the leader of the weed growers, only has about half-a-dozen scenes but is decently well-liked for his beleaguered nature and spirited defense of the weed stash despite how outgunned he and his gang are.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Gary asks Barry if they're on a "need to know basis" like in a James Bond film. Matthew Vaughn would later direct Layer Cake, which led to Daniel Craig being cast as 007.
  • Future action star Jason Statham has trouble knocking Rob Brydon unconscious.
• Improved by the Re-Cut: The Director's Cut most notably explores the backstory between Harry and J.D.'s rivalry and why Harry wants the bar so much.
• Jerkass Woobie: Gary and Dean the Scouser burglars lose some sympathy for burning the feet of the people they're robbing to try and find out where their valuables are, but they're mostly presented as humorous characters living in terror of being killed for failing Hatchet Harry. Just how pitiful they are is emphasised by their final scene — had they not blundered into the wrong situation, their problems would have been over.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Big" Chris is an enforcer and hired muscle to anyone willing to pay, renowned in the criminal world for not only his excellent success rate, but his honorable nature as well. Big Chris is hired by Harry "the Hatchet" to ensure his debtees, Eddie's group, pay up as the story starts, and Big Chris proceeds to not only swipe the cash from Eddie, but also obtains two treasured shotguns Harry has been hunting, all through nothing but precise timing and opportunity. Raising his son, "Little" Chris, in his ways to hopefully one day hand the "family business" over to the boy, Big Chris does anything he can to protect his son from outsiders, notably fooling the vicious Dog into lowering his guard before brutally killing him when he threatens Little Chris. After Harry is killed, Big Chris seizes the opportunity to swipe the man's fortune, set himself and his son up for life as kingpins themselves, then shows his respects to Eddie's group for their tenacity in facing Harry by letting them keep the shotguns ... although he might have let them keep those as he knows they were stolen and could be linked to Dean's death, so perhaps it's best to let someone else deal with them.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The execution of the two drug dealers in Dog's first scene does it for him - they've already told him everything he wants to know, and are tied up, terrified, and begging for their lives. That earns them neither sympathy nor mercy. Even Dog's own crew, who are hardly saints themselves, are taken aback this.
  • Another contender for this is when Dog threatens to slice Little Chris's throat if Big Chris doesn't give him back the guns he stole. Fortunately, Dog ends up receiving a brutal death for threatening the son of a loan shark's muscle.
  • Plank selling out the people he buys weed to Dog and co. so he can get a better share out of their next robbery establishes him as a treacherous little shit.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Dog's Establishing Character Moment, where he's brutally interrogating two drug dealers for their money, torturing one of them by hanging him upside-down and whacking golf balls at him from the mouth of the other one. And then he uses a throwing knife to finish off the helpless dangler. What a nice guy.
  • A scene establishing where Barry the Baptist gets his name from: he's brutally holding some unlucky soul's head in a water barrel, hauling him up to furiously bellow at him to repay his debts, and then shoving him under the water again. And he's timing himself with his wristwatch while he's doing it. What a monster.
  • Dog's death scene also qualifies. We don't get to see what he looks like when Big Chris is done with him, but the POV shots from Dog's perspective of this massive, threatening loan shark's enforcer screaming and swearing in incoherent rage while beating his head to a pulp with a car door, coupled with the slow muting of sound and jarring music, doesn't exactly look pleasant. Then again, it's not like anyone's gonna miss Dog.
• One-Scene Wonder: Danny John-Jules as Barfly Jack, who tells Tom a story about Rory Breaker in Cockney Rhyming Slang.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • This is the movie that effectively launched the (film) careers of Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones.
  • Rob Brydon is the traffic warden.
• Unintentional Period Piece
  • Soap says that things are starting to feel like "a bad day in Bosnia," referencing the then-current Balkan Wars.
  • At the very end, Ed, Bacon and Soap scramble to call Tom on their cellphones and all ask each other, "What's his number?!?" Modern cellphones have contact lists.

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