The first Guy Ritchie movie I ever watched was Snatch. I was probably too young for it (and to appreciate half of what was happening), but I knew I’d never seen anything like it because I couldn’t look away. There was something about the editing, the character names, the way every character name sounded like a bad joke, and the way every scene managed to be chaotic and controlled at the same time. I went back and rewatched Lock, Stock last week, and by the time I finished that one, I understood something important: Guy Ritchie’s style is so specific that his imitators (and there are many) can never get even within touching distance of it.
What people often miss when they write Ritchie off as a one-trick director is how much range sits inside that trick. The seven movies below are my favorites. They cover gritty London gangster comedies, Cold War spy capers, blockbuster franchise reinventions, and a stripped-back war drama that surprised everyone, including fans who had followed his career for two decades. Also, as an added bonus, they’re endlessly rewatchable.
Why You Should Trust Me: I cover action movies extensively at MovieWeb, and Guy Ritchie’s filmography is one I know inside out. I have written about his movies across multiple formats, tracked how his style has evolved across genres, and watched his best work enough times to know exactly what makes it hold up. This is not a ranking based on box office or critical consensus. It’s based on the movies and their rewatchability.
‘RocknRolla’ (2008)
Ritchie’s Most Underrated Movie Has the Best Ensemble He Has Ever Put Together
Warner Bros./MovieStillsDB
Watch This If: After the twin disasters of Swept Away and Revolver, RocknRolla helped Ritchie get his swagger back. It has the same London underworld energy as Lock, Stock and Snatch, but it is darker and more grounded, with fewer comic-book flourishes and more menace. The cast is particularly extraordinary.
Gerard Butler plays the charming, slightly dim One Two; Tom Wilkinson is at his most terrifying as mob boss Lenny Cole; Mark Strong narrates the whole thing with silky, dangerous calm; and Tom Hardy, barely known at this point, steals every scene he appears in as Handsome Bob. Idris Elba, the GOAT, is here too. And Toby Kebbell plays the drugged-up rock star stepson. It’s a complete roster, and the movie’s a cult classic, so I’m surprised more people don’t know about it.
Skip This If: RocknRolla is the most plot-dense movie on the list, and the first 20 minutes demand your full attention. Ritchie throws in a lot of names and relationships on the screen very fast, and if you lose track of things early, the movie does not hold your hand. The ending also wraps up faster than it should. If you want Ritchie at his most controlled and satisfying, start with a different movie and come back to this one.
‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ (2015)
Ritchie Proves He Can Do Cool Without the Cockney and the Result Is One of the Most Stylish Capers of the Decade
Watch This If: I didn’t expect Guy Ritchie to make one of my favorite spy movies, but The Man From U.N.C.L.E. proved his style could work outside London’s criminal underworld and convinced me it wasn’t geography-coded. Everything that makes his best work so watchable, including the pace, the wit, and those perfectly timed cuts, is fully present here. Except we’re transported to the 1960s and the scenes are shot with the color palette of an Italian fashion magazine. Henry Cavill plays Napoleon Solo with a languid charm and Armie Hammer is the funniest he’s ever been as the Soviet agent forced to partner with him. The period detail is immaculate, the action sequences are inventive, and my absolute favorite scene involves a motorboat, a stolen truck, and a picnic basket. If you know, you know.
Skip This If: The plot, when you pay close attention to it, is fairly thin, and the movie knows it and compensates by being extraordinarily good-looking and fun at all times. Viewers who need their spy thrillers to have intensity and weight will find it too breezy. It also does not have the Cockney edge that defines Ritchie’s most devoted fanbase’s favorite movies, so if that energy is what you are after specifically, this is the outlier.
‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’ (2023)
The Least Guy Ritchie Movie Ritchie Has Ever Made Is Also Among His Very Best
United Artists Releasing
Watch This If: Honestly, nobody saw this coming. The Covenant reminded us that Ritchie is capable of a lot more than fast-talking gangsters and flashy editing. He strips away almost every trademark associated with him and tells a pretty straightforward story about loyalty, survival, and a debt you cannot run away from. Jake Gyllenhaal plays an American sergeant, and while he’s excellent, it’s Dar Salim’s interpreter, Ahmed, who really stays with me.
There’s a long stretch in the middle of the movie where he carries a wounded Gyllenhaal across hostile terrain, and there’s no dialogue, but it’s so heavy to watch. And from there on, it’s impossible not to be invested in what happens next. The action sequences are staged to perfection, and the movie’s argument about the U.S. government’s abandonment of Afghan interpreters lands with its intended weight.
Skip This If: If you come to Ritchie for the banter, the baroque plotting, and the ensemble cast doing witty things with witty dialogue, The Covenant is not that movie. It is slow in places, deliberately and correctly so, but slow in ways that test patience if you are expecting the kinetic energy of his crime films. This is a movie about two people and the weight of a debt, and that’s all.
‘Sherlock Holmes’ (2009)
Ritchie Takes the Most Adapted Character in Fiction and Makes Him Feel Completely New
Watch This If: Every decade or so, someone figures out that Sherlock Holmes works best when you stop treating him like a museum artifact and let him be strange and messy and alive. Ritchie’s version, with Robert Downey Jr. playing Holmes as a brilliant, feral, slightly unhinged Victorian action hero, is the best version of the character committed to the small screen.
The London it conjures is grimy and thick with fog and beautiful in its textures. I’d go as far as saying it’s one of Ritchie’s finest pieces of world-building. And Jude Law’s Watson? Best Watson in the history of cinema. Also, the central mystery is a proper mystery, the action is grounded in Holmes’s obsessiveness, and the dynamic between the two leads is a delight to watch.
Skip This If: The movie’s villain and central conspiracy are its weakest elements. Mark Strong does everything he can with Blackwood, but the occult-secret-society plot feels less substantial than everything surrounding it. If you want a tight, single-thread mystery with a satisfying ending, the plot is sprawling enough to frustrate. Come for the characters; the mystery is secondary.
‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ (1998)
The Debut That Made Ritchie Relevant and Launched Jason Statham Into Stardom
Channel 4
Watch This If: Let’s backtrack a little for this one. Ritchie didn’t go to film school and didn’t have industry connections. All he had was a 20-minute short, a £5,000 deal for Jason Statham, a cast of genuine ex-cons mixed with a former professional footballer, and a budget of £1.35 million. Ten distributors passed on it, and yet, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels went on to gross over $29 million, win a BAFTA, and spawn a genre.
What Ritchie did with his debut feature was take everything that British crime cinema had been doing since Get Carter and inject it with fresh velocity and black comedic energy. The converging storylines, the Cockney nicknames, the sudden violence – none of it existed in this form before this movie, and every Guy Ritchie that came after this shares something in common. If you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, please just do it.
Skip This If: The dialogue moves at a breakneck speed, and if you miss the first 20 minutes, it is almost impossible to catch up on who owes what to whom. Some of the comedy has aged in specific ways that viewers unfamiliar with late-90s London working-class culture may find opaque. This is also the most chaotic of all his movies structurally, and while the chaos is the point, it requires a certain level of tolerance for confusion.
‘The Gentlemen’ (2019)
Proves That Hugh Grant Had a Great Performance Waiting in Him for Twenty Years
Watch This If: After a decade of Disney remakes and blockbuster-for-hire work, Guy Ritchie returned to the London underworld to make something brilliant again. The Gentlemen is sharp, funny, endlessly quotable, and packed with characters who are all convinced they’re the smartest person in the group. Speaking of which, Hugh Grant is a true revelation as Fletcher, a sleazy private investor. I’d never seen him have this much fun on screen, and it makes me wonder why nobody gave him material like this before. Colin Farrell does nearly the same with far less screen time. What I enjoy most, though, is how relaxed the movie feels. Ritchie isn’t trying to recreate Snatch; he’s simply telling the story he tells best.
Skip This If: Some of the racial humor has not aged well, and the movie is self-aware enough about it that you can feel Ritchie knowing it and doing it anyway, which is not the same as it being funny. If that kind of material takes you out of a story, it will take you out of this one. Also, the meta-narrative structure, while clever, occasionally gets in the way of the momentum.
‘Snatch’ (2000)
The Best Movie of Ritchie’s Career Is Also One of the Best Action Comedies Ever Made
Stephen Graham and Jason Statham in SnatchSony Pictures Releasing
Watch This If: If someone asked me to recommend just one Guy Ritchie movie, I would pick Snatch without thinking twice. Ritchie takes the most fitting elements of Lock, Stock, raises the budget, expands the canvas, and adds Brad Pitt into the mix. He plays a Traveller boxer whose accent is incomprehensible to the other characters and audible only in flashes to the audience. That choice is the perfect encapsulation of the movie’s logic – it should not work, it is clearly insane, and it is still one of the funniest performances of the 2000s.
For a refreshing change, the plotting is more controlled than Lock, Stock’s. I mean, there are still eight or nine different characters pursuing the same stolen diamond from different directions, but Ritchie has a tighter grip on the chaos. He knows when to let it breathe and when to pull it back. It’s obviously endlessly rewatchable, too. Every time you think you’ve seen everything Snatch has to offer, it finds one more way to surprise you.
Skip This If: This is not a movie with a moral center, and the violence, while mostly comedic, is sometimes not funny. If you prefer your action flick to have characters you can root for with closed eyes and a story with a legible ethical argument, Snatch is going to test you. It is also a movie that assumes you are paying full attention at all times, and the story moves accordingly.
Which Guy Ritchie movie gets better every time you watch it? Comment below!