Writer-director Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels is an extraordinarily stylish crime comedy set in London. Most of the characters have thick Cockney accents and clever if harsh dialogue. Ritchie's story has quite the sense of humor about itself: as a cast of dozens of shady characters -- everything from petty thieves to loan sharks to big mean crime bosses -- try to get money or pay money or contract jobs or execute jobs or exact revenge, hilarious cosmic coincidences tangle their paths in a knot. The end is beautiful.

Two years later, Ritchie made Snatch, which is so much like this film in tone that it might as well be considered a sequel. If you like one, chances are you'll like the other.