Formula 51: You’re Gonna Kiss the Sun and Taste the Motherfuckin’ Rainbow

Some movies are remembered for their plot. Some for their cinematography. And some survive because, twenty-five years later, you can still hear Samuel L. Jackson yelling:

“Can’t a brother just deal some goddamn DRUGS?”

The 51st State, also released as Formula 51, is one of those movies

It is a 2001 crime comedy starring Samuel L. Jackson as Elmo McElroy, an American chemist who has invented a new recreational drug and arrives in Liverpool expecting to make a fortune. Instead, he discovers that England has its own rules, its own criminals, its own football obsession, and, most importantly, fish and chips

Good dialogue does more than tell you what a character is saying. It creates a world around them. It tells jokes, establishes character, moves the plot forward, explains the cultural distance between America and Britain, and occasionally stops everything dead just long enough for Samuel L. Jackson to say something completely absurd

Jackson plays Elmo McElroy, an American chemist who has invented a new recreational drug and travels to Liverpool to sell it. Elmo is not merely an American in Britain. He is an American who believes he understands exactly how the world works, which makes his arrival in Liverpool particularly useful to the screenplay. He is brilliant, confident, physically capable, and completely unwilling to accept that the local rules might matter. The dialogue establishes this immediately. When Elmo encounters British customs, criminal slang, food, football culture, and the general atmosphere of Liverpool

Blackspoitation, but make it Liverpool

“What the fuck did they do to this fish? Batter it to death?”

Felix DeSouza, played by Robert Carlyle, provides the opposite perspective. He is a British character who has already decided that America is ridiculous. His description of the United States as “fuckin' Albania in neon”. America is excessive, bright, chaotic, and vaguely threatening

This is one of the movie's strengths. Its characters rarely explain themselves in the conventional sense. They reveal themselves through the metaphors they choose. Elmo talks about drugs as though he has created a religious experience. Felix describes America through a bizarre geopolitical comparison. The criminals speak in the language of people who have spent too much time around other criminals. The police have their own criminal vocabulary

“51 times stronger than cocaine, 51 times more hallucinogenic than acid, and 51 times more explosive than ecstasy.”

Elmo is a chemist, yet he doesn't sell the invention through scientific language. He sells it through mythology. He's a modern shaman, with the power to make millions of dollars from placebo

Then there is the kilt. The purest example of the movie trusting its own absurdity. Elmo walks around Liverpool wearing one, and the film never seems particularly interested in explaining why. Samuel L. Jackson wears it with the same confidence with which Elmo handles a gun, a car, or a chemistry problem. It tells us that Elmo is completely comfortable being conspicuous

That is especially effective because the rest of the movie is so interested in language. Elmo sounds American, looks American, thinks like an American, and then walks around in a kilt

That is ultimately why the dialogue in The 51st State is more interesting than the individual jokes suggest. The movie is not simply full of funny lines. Its characters use language as territory. American English and British English are constantly occupying the same space without quite agreeing on what the space means. Slang becomes identity. Profanity becomes rhythm. Metaphor becomes characterization. Insults become intimacy. Advertising becomes mythology

And because this is a crime movie, the language also keeps the plot moving. Characters need information, money, drugs, protection, transportation, and trust. They have to persuade one another to do things. Every negotiation is an opportunity for someone to reveal who they are. A good crime screenplay can make an exchange of information feel like action, and The 51st State frequently does exactly that, only with much more swearing

And then there is Emily Mortimer

All her scenes are a collision of personalities. Elmo is loud, confident, experienced, and constantly performing.

Dakota is cooler and considerably less impressed

She also has perhaps the most economical character philosophy in the entire movie:

“I don't do alive. I do dead.”

The plot is basically an excuse

The best thing about The 51st State might be its vocabulary. The movie throws American Black slang, British slang, profanity, criminal jargon, football culture, drug culture, and absurd one-liners into the same blender

The story involves a new drug, rival dealers, double-crosses, gangsters, corrupt cops, missing money, and various people trying to kill each other

The result is a movie that is much smarter about its dialogue than its reputation might suggest. It is not sophisticated in the conventional sense. It is loud, vulgar, stylized, occasionally ridiculous, and very pleased with itself. But the writing understands that a memorable line is most useful when it tells you something about the person saying it.

But the plot isn't really why you watch this movie. You watch it because Elmo McElroy walks into Liverpool like he has accidentally been transported into someone else's movie and refuses to admit it

The literal review

If you are reviewing a movie like The 51st State, you could spend thousands of words discussing its screenplay, pacing, performances, editing, cinematography, or place in early-2000s British crime cinema

And you could. But sometimes the most honest review is much simpler.

Is it fun? Yes

Is it ridiculous? Extremely

Does Samuel L. Jackson get to be Samuel L. Jackson? Absolutely

Are there enough car chases, shootouts, drugs, football hooligans, British slang, American slang, double-crosses and profanity to sustain the whole thing? Almost suspiciously so

There is something almost comforting about a movie this unapologetically stupid and fun. You don't need to solve it. You don't need to analyze it. You just need to sit back while Samuel L. Jackson invents a drug, hates fish and chips, gets into increasingly ridiculous situations, and eventually asks the question that perhaps

“Can't a brother just deal some goddamn DRUGS?”

Apparently not. Not in the 51st State