Leonti: Ritchie's films are plastic

4:00pm Thursday 28th August 2008

Debut film director Paris Leonti has described Guy Ritchie's films as "plastic".

Leonti's film Daylight Robbery, which premiered on Wednesday night, depicts London characters who decide to rob a bank, but he insisted his work was not like Ritchie's.

"I like to think that I'm nowhere near Guy Ritchie. As I said before Guy Ritchie makes plastic gangster films. He writes about characters that kind of like are a caricature. Whereas mine are real characters, they are actually London boys, they're robbing a bank."

He continued: "It's the real thing and hopefully when people watch it they will appreciate what I'm trying to do. I am trying to change people's minds on all these over-played, exaggerated gangster movies."

Geoff Bell, who appears in Daylight Robbery and Ritchie's film RocknRolla said he thought his characters in both films were realistic in their own way.

"How do you define a gangster? In this film I play a normal guy and in Guy's movie I play someone who's just out for what he can get.

"He knows where he wants to go and what he wants, but he doesn't want to be a gangster. And that's a lot like London," he said.