While wanting to revisit the genre that put him on the map, Ritchie also sought to use RocknRolla as an exploration of how his native country has changed during the past 20 years as well as the criminal element contained within. “A few years ago, if your average gangster had made a few million pounds, it was seen as a big to-do, and that’s really been eclipsed by the international Eastern European gangster who comes packing billions.”

That’s reflected in the movie, with the Russian mob coming in as the new school of criminal is trying to oust the old school while a huge scam is going down. And it has its requisite creative use of curse words and motley crew of Ritchie characters, such as One Two (Gerard Butler), a street-smart, small-time crook who’s half going legit but in a dodgy way; Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), the old-school mobster who doesn’t care for all the whippersnappers about town; a drugged-out-of-his-mind rock star named Johnny Quid (newcomer Toby Kebbel); and his two hustling American managers (Jeremy Piven and Ludacris), creations influenced by an OutKast video Ritchie saw.

“I just wanted to take the ride and it did not disappoint, that’s for sure,” Piven says. Butler adds: “What I love about Guy is that name. He’s an institution. Suddenly you’re there and you’re working with him, and what surprised me was how easygoing he was. And for me then, there’s a trust — you have a director who knows exactly what he wants but he’s gonna let you do what you want.”

Why do crime and Ritchie click so well? “I just like undercultures and subcultures. It just happens to be my thing,” he says, although he jokes, “The criminal underbelly of society is heavily frowned upon by myself.” But they sure make for good cinema. He talks fondly about the former ne’er-do-well that inspired the infamous pig-feeding scene in Snatch. “Now he’s a grandfather, a lovely chap, gives to charity, runs his local football team and looks like your average, avuncular, generous individual,” Ritchie explains. “Sometimes there’s nothing exotic about the exoticism of crime. And that’s kind of interesting in itself, that sometimes people can do what we see as heinous and nefarious acts and to them, it’s just par for the course.”

He’s switching to the law-and-order side of things for his next flick, a Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. as the title detective, Jude Law as his loyal No. 2, Watson, and equal parts smarts and action. “Originally, Sherlock Holmes was this intellectual action man, and I think what happened was filmmakers played down the action man aspect because they didn’t have the means of executing the action in an interesting way. Well, we have the means and the technology.”

When he’s not making films, Ritchie’s running his own pub in London, The Punchbowl (“It’s much harder to run a pub than it is to make a film, by the way,” he says), and playing tourist with his resident Material Girl. “I live vicariously through my wife. It makes it easy being married to an American. London’s big. New York goes up, but London just goes on and on and on. It’s been going on for 2,000 years.”

(Photos courtesy of Warner Bros.)