Revolver

He's one of the most talked about film-makers in Britain, not least because he's married to Madge.

Once a struggling music video director who left school at 15 without a single GCSE, Hatfield-born Guy Ritchie is making history as the man who tamed the most successful and headstrong female singer in the world.

After seven years in Guy's company, the Material Girl now seems to spend most of her time prancing about in tweed and enjoying country pursuits at their sprawling Wiltshire estate.

And while rumours persist that their marriage is in trouble, the couple appear united in their devotion to Kabbalah, their love of The Ivy restaurant and their family life. Guy claims his greatest joy in life is being a dad to Rocco, his five-year-old son with Madonna, and step-dad to her eight-year- old daughter Lourdes.

"I love fatherhood," he says. "I could bang on about kids forever. I'd love to have more."

Madonna may have helped raise his profile but, celebrity gossip aside, Guy has earned a reputation in his own right. In the late Nineties he was seen, with his production partner Matthew Vaughan, as one of the most exciting film industry finds since Quentin Tarantino.

Their first film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, was turned down by ten British distributors before it caught the attention of Tom Cruise.

Made for £960,000, it became the third highest-grossing British film of all time. Snatch, Guy and Matthew's second film, was also a success.

And now, after a savage mauling from the critics for his last film Swept Away - which featured his wife in the lead role - Guy has bounced back with a new film, Revolver, co-produced by French director Luc Besson. Leaving the beach of Swept Away behind, Guy's back on familiar turf.

The film is very much in the mould of his acclaimed gangster movies Snatch and Lock, Stock. Starring Ritchie mainstay Jason Statham as well as Goodfellas star Ray Liotta and Outkast rapper Andre 3000, Revolver tells the story of a hotshot gambler Jake Green (Statham) who comes up with the ultimate con to get revenge on Dorothy Macha (Liotta), a ruthless criminal and casino owner who framed him years earlier.

Jake is barred from every casino in town because he always wins. One night, he and his brothers, Billy and Joe, are invited to sit in on a private game where Jake is expected to lose to Macha - who can't play for squat but always wins because people are too scared to beat him.

Jake isn't afraid of Macha and not only beats him in a quick game of chance, but takes every possible opportunity to insult and humiliate him.

Jake and his brothers leave the game, and Macha puts out the order for a hit on Jake, who ends up working for and being protected by a pair of brothers, Avi and Zack, who are out to destroy Macha.

But are they on Jake's side or just out to control his prodigious abilities?

The film is carried forward by Jake's brooding inner monologue, which is far from trustworthy. Is Jake who he thinks he is, or is he trapped in a game far more perilous than he ever thought possible? And who is the mythic master criminal Sam Gold, rumoured to be capable of controlling people's thoughts?

With plenty of plot twists, the film is packed with visual effects, graphic violence and unconventional editing: A car accident plays itself out backwards in slow-motion, while a scene involving Jake, Avi and Zach intercepting a drug deal is animated.

"My approach to violence is that if it's pertinent, if that's the kind of movie you're making, then it has a purpose," says Guy.

"There's quite a lot of violence in this film but I like to think that it serves the story, that it illustrates the point we're trying to convey."

Guy insists Revolver is an allegory for life. "It's funny, I never expected as a writer-director to end up talking about high-falutin' concepts," he says.

"But I do think Jake, the central character, represents all of us. He's on a journey of how to play the game. We can all be conned - but at what point do we realise that we're being conned and to what point do we allow ourselves to be conned?

"The idea is that there is no such thing as an external enemy. Jake Green is playing against Jake Green, the only opponent he has to challenge is himself by doing exactly what he doesn't want to do."

Making the movie was also a great excuse for Guy to work with his old mate Jason Statham. The pair have now collaborated on three of Guy's movies and there's clearly a bond.

"Well, apart from the fact I don't like him, don't trust him and have no respect for him as a chess player, Jason and I work quite well together," Guy quips.

"Actually Jason forced me into using him. He threatened me with violence. But, seriously, I do like him because it's much easier to work with him. He's a very capable actor and he embodies what I want to see when I go to the cinema."

Revolver is full of chancers, losers, hard men and has-beens. There's lots of dark rooms, bright lights, suits, sex, guns and mayhem.

"The movie is set in no-man's land," says Guy. "It's a kind of transatlantic destination that is really supposed to be illustrative of East meets West somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. In fact, we shot most of it in London and the Isle of Man."

Surprisingly, Guy's personal world-view is a lot more ordered than the chaotic characters he creates on screen.

"I don't believe chance exists at all," he says simply. "I subscribe to the idea that there is order in the world although it may look like total chaos."

A similar philosophy seems to drive Guy's famous "missus", as he affectionately calls her. As mistress of re-invention Madonna has been in control of her career every step of the way - and Guy admits that's one of the reasons he fell for her.

"She has an idea and she can make it happen," says Guy, who met Madonna at a dinner party hosted by Sting and his wife Trudie Styler.

Guy seems sanguine about Swept Away.

"I don't think it's a great film but I also don't think it's a bad film," he says.

"The idea was that the wife and I would make some sassy little art movie together that would come out and be wonderfully received. I took a punt and got a kicking for it. I guess we were both due a dousing."

But it hasn't put him off. The film-maker says being behind the camera still gives him the biggest buzz of all.

"Being on set is the most fun - you feel you're on a battlefield," he says. "It's interactive and gregarious."

But only hours after Madonna stood alongside her husband at the film's premiere at the Toronto Film Festival calling Revolver his best and most sophisticated film yet, critics gave it a pasting.

It was dismissed as a "convoluted, risibly overwrought muddle" by one US magazine. Screen International also warned viewers would be left "bewildered and disappointed" by what the Hollywood Reporter described as "pretentious style and fractured storytelling". The reviewer Kirk Honeycutt adds: "The movie spins wildly in circles, continually doubling back on itself, repeating scenes and lines of dialogue until a viewer loses a grip on what is supposed to be real."

Guy admits his film may be a challenge to cinema-goers. "But I think the audience is ready for that. I got fed up with films that didn't make you think.

I liked the idea of one that you'd have to dance around with.

"I like my mind to be engaged when I watch a film."