The Littlest Gay London Street Tough

I do this thing whenever I watch a movie that I particularly liked that also features an ensemble cast where I go searching for every fucking minute any of the involved actors have ever been on film. Post-Inception, this manifested as getting my grubby hands on copies of 10 Things I Hate About You, Mysterious Skin, Brick, and Stop-Loss because of Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I downloaded that one episode of That 70's Show he was in where he played the Buddy, the gay friend with the great car. I sat through two entire fucking hours of G.I. Joe for five minutes of him in army blues and another viewing of Latter Days. (I hate that movie so intensely. So. Intensely.)

After I ran out of JGL movies to plow through, two things happened. One, I realized I'd already seen everything with Ellen Page and two, someone, somewhere said something about Tom Hardy playing Gay Bob in a Guy Ritchie movie. Now, I'm not a particularly huge fan of Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes notwithstanding), but I walked out of Inception as a fan of Tom Hardy's mouth and I am always a fan of queer characters. There was only one thing to do and that was to get my hands on a copy of Rocknrolla.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm an American kid hailing from smack dab in the fucking middle of the country in a town with an actual population of cowboys, where people say y'all unironically. And Rocknrolla is intensely British, to the point where I almost turned the subtitles on because there were points where I was convinced that the characters had stopped speaking English.

But I actually did really enjoy it. I am total sucker for movies with that dirty, gritty feel to it, especially when there are working class characters. I recognize those people from my life in a way that I don't usually, with the drinking and smoking and swearing and bad life choices. Plus, the soundtrack was fucking awesome and the one guaranteed way to make me like even the shittiest movie is to get a great soundtrack going on.

But hey, for the purposes of this, Tom Hardy was indeed there playing Bob, who was the youngest, littlest, blondest, and dare I say, oddly twinkiest little street tough I have ever seen. And it was actually really great. There is very little that will get me to like queer characters more than them having a sense of humor about their sexualities and being little shits about it, particularly when it's done in the service of making non-queers uncomfortable.

The one scene that most stuck out to me with Bob was the scene in the car with One Two, in which Bob thinks he's going to jail for five years in the morning, One Two tries to cheer him up with a promise of escorts, and Bob comes out.

I've been mulling over in my head a lot since I finished the movie what it was exactly about the scene that I liked so much. Because One Two's reaction isn't instantly positive and supportive; he's actually a real fucker about it, pulling out the usual stops that Bob can't be gay, because he's handsome and because he's a ladykiller and because if he was gay One Two would know, goddamnit. And he almost instantly comes around and apologizes, but if you've ever come out, you know that nothing is going to stick so much as that first immediate reaction that comes from the gut.

And despite this, I still rewatched that scene four times because it seemed so completely and totally real to me.

I think the honest answer is because of recognition again. Man, I have been in that seat with Bob way too many times before, listening to someone freak their shit out because they never thought of me as One Of Those People and it fucks with their world perception. There's a brutal honesty in One Two's immediate reaction and there's an honesty in his apologizing for it immediately afterward. The sense that he loved Bob was there and raw and that shit happens when people disconnect between who they think you are and who you really are.

What really made the whole thing for me was Bob's reaction, which managed to cut a little bit closer to home than it seemed at the time. He's not furious and he's not sobbing in agony, he treats it like he made a mistake. He was resigned more than anything else, and disappointed and apologetic and that screwy mess of emotions is way too fucking familiar.

And aside from the car scene, there were a bunch of other moments that worked for me. Bob flirting with the lawyer dude was fucking hilarious and anyone who thinks otherwise has clearly never been macked on by an older person. The little exchange with, "I'm going to bed" "Can I come with?" made me actually love Bob a little because I seriously fucking love people who go out of their way to make their friends squirm. It's one of my favorite things.

So yeah, Rocknrolla. I hope the card before the credits wasn't fucking around about their being a sequel. Because if Bob is there, I'm there.