Tarantino is maybe the King of picking great music for the soundtracks of his movies, but with a smaller list of directorial credits, Guy Ritchie is maybe the Crown Prince, with his trio of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and RocknRolla, providing enough tuneage for a great night out on a caper…
Then it got me thinking, The Italian Job (no not the awful remake, the original with minis, Cockney rhyming slang and Benny Hill), Sexy Beast, Layer Cake, Buster, The Krays… can all claim a good line in British tuneage to go along with a cheeky caper.
Iconic cars, antique shotguns, diamonds, gypsy camp sites, drug heists, hungry pigs, improbably named hard men, and laconic one-liners… the movie genre of British gangster movies has them all, as well as underlying black humour laced with matter-of-fact violence.
It was while watching RocknRolla (and wondering when the sequel is likely to come out) that made me realise the list of great tunes that Brit crime capers have brought to the silver screen, and decided it was time for Hong Kong Beat to cut the pony and let the dog see the rabbit. So, for no other reason than I like them, I present Hong Kong Beat’s tribute to Brit crime capers.
See if you can spot the films from the tunes (answers in the Mixcloud track list)
Hong Kong Beat 