Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels has never been an attractive film -- part of its charm lies in the grit and grime of its sepia-toned, neo-noir visuals -- but Universal's 1080p/VC-1 transfer is an unrepentant mess. Yes, compared to its decidedly dated DVD counterpart, colors are more stable and vibrant, black levels are much deeper, and detail is more refined and revealing. Unfortunately, overzealous artificial sharpening results in a number of issues. Frequent aliasing, ringing, serrated edges, and aggressive bursts of razor-sharp grain undermine the integrity of the transfer, cursing the presentation with an unnatural, digitized haze that robs the image of what could presumably be a convincing filmic appearance. It doesn't help that smudged textures and softness are more pronounced, specks and scratches pepper the proceedings, and contrast is pushed to such an extreme that clarity, skintones, and delineation take significant hits. As for the proficiency of the transfer itself, crush is a consistent issue, but artifacting and banding are kept to a minimum; grain spikes and lulls as it always has, but obvious smearing leaves me to believe DNR has been used on many sequences. That being said, it's tough to tell where Ritchie's production limitations end and Universal's fugly transfer begins. Desperate DVD owners will be somewhat pleased with any upgrade, even an inherent one, but newcomers and videophiles will be far less forgiving. Brace yourselves, gents.

Presented in 1.85:1 widescreen in 1080p high definition, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels has had some color adjustment done in post-production to convey a brownish image. That carries over well on Blu-ray, with image detail noticeable in quite a few scenes, though there's not a lot of background depth to provide any multidimensional look. Film grain is present throughout the images, but any excessive (or "distracting") grain I'll chalk up to the filmmakers' intent. In summary, the film looks good but not great on Blu-ray.