A return to formula

LONDON — Like many English pubs, the Punch Bowl carries quite a history. The Mayfair drinking establishment first started serving ale in the middle of the 18th century, when King George II ruled. Like some pockets of London, though, the two-story tavern turned into a grimy relic of a forgotten era -- the janitor did the pub's cooking and the beer was as uninspiring as the ambience.

And then filmmaker Guy Ritchie bought the place.

The pub's scary meat pies have since been pushed aside by organic smoked salmon, and authentic, hand-pulled British pints have replaced the modern, soulless lagers.

"I love pubs, I love pubs," Ritchie said during a recent visit to his bar as the refurbishment of the Punch Bowl was just beginning. "Pubs just happen to be one of those institutions that are just quintessentially English, and four pubs a day shut down in the U.K."

The Punch Bowl isn't Ritchie's only restoration project.

The 39-year-old writer and director also is trying to breathe life into his own filmmaking career. After a commercial and critical slump that included "Revolver" and the remake "Swept Away" (which starred his wife, Madonna), Ritchie, with his new movie, “RocknRolla,” is returning to the genre that established his cinematic identity: the British gangster movie.

In 1998, Ritchie and producing partner Matthew Vaughn made "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," a low-budget London crime caper that overflowed with kinetic visuals, colorful dialogue and distinctive heavies. The drama grossed more than $100 million worldwide, and two years later Ritchie and Vaughn collaborated on "Snatch," which helped to further Ritchie's subspecies of stylishly violent British crime stories; similar efforts included Vaughn's "Layer Cake" and Paul McGuigan's "Gangster No. 1."

But while Ritchie's honor-among-thieves movies always had exhibited a complex mix of attitude, nihilism and convoluted plotting, the combination proved caustic to 2005's "Revolver," which was drubbed by critics and ignored by moviegoers. Even "300's" Gerard Butler, who stars in "RocknRolla," admits he didn't see it.

"I think it's impossible for a movie like that to do well. It's an inaccessible concept," Ritchie said in a postmortem of his movie about revenge, self-doubt and philosophy, "because it's about the idea that there is essentially no such thing as an external enemy, that ultimately you are the enemy."