Guy Ritchie’s 10/10 Gangster Classic Is The Blueprint For MobLand Season 2

Published Aug 20, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT After joining Screen Rant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers. With MobLand’s second season less than a month away, the buzz around Guy Ritchie’s action-packed gangster series is going into overdrive. The glimpses of season 2 that we’ve seen so far suggest that it’s going to be more intense and harder-hitting than anything we saw in the show’s first season. In this sense, at least, MobLand has a clear blueprint to follow. Ritchie’s debut feature film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a chaotic story of mob infighting and betrayal which moves through the gears towards its dizzying conclusion. Now that the stage has been set for Harry Da Souza’s criminal underworld to completely unravel, things are about to get messy. If the ending to MobLand season 1 has its fair share of high-stakes thrills and impulsive violence, then this second season takes things up another notch. It helps that it’s introduced a new antagonist, known simply as “Beast”, whose unhinged screen presence is highly reminiscent of Rory Breaker from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Although just the opening salvo of an impressively versatile career in cinema, this swaggering modern classic of the gangster genre remains Guy Ritchie’s best movie, and informs every crime movie or TV show in which the director involves himself. Early indications point towards MobLand season 2 following the Lock, Stock model of organized criminal chaos. MobLand Is Ramping Up The Danger And Destruction In Season 2 MovieStillsDB Featuring Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren all in top form, Guy Ritchie’s gangster thriller on Paramount+ returns with a bang on September 18. The trailer for MobLand’s second season has already revealed that Hardy’s protagonist Harry Da Souza is facing his most perilous predicament yet, while the Harrigan family is more divided than ever. The arrival of Johnny Flynn’s new villain Beast on the scene will hardly calm things down. Rather than a rival gang worth negotiating with, Beast appears capable of almost anything, and seems unlikely to respond to reason. Harry has to contend with more threats than ever before, as danger lurks in every corner. Meanwhile, season 2 promises more gunfights, punchups, explosions, and car chases than its forerunner, all happening at breakneck speed, in the kinetic style associated with Guy Ritchie and his directorial acolytes. The only chance Harry Da Souza has to catch his breath is the moment he takes a hapless London cyclist hostage in the back of his van. MobLand’s direction of travel follows a storytelling pattern that fans of Ritchie’s work will be very familiar with. It allows for combustible action sequences to blend increasingly farcical dialogue, in a downward spiral of internecine gangland destruction that’s as wryly humorous as it is intensely gripping. Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels Is The Blueprint For MobLand’s Plot Arc It was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels that created the template for MobLand’s plot trajectory to follow. Besides featuring the perfect opening scene to a gangster movie, Lock, Stock moves from relative order to absolute chaos with playful abandon, offering us at least one joke per minute on the way there. Now that MobLand’s premise has been fully established by its first season, it’s time for writers Ronan Bennett and Jez Butterworth to have some fun with it, leading us down a rabbit hole of double-crossing families and swivel-eyed villains. Main series director and executive producer Guy Ritchie is the ideal person to be supervising this work. Harry Da Souza enters unchartered territory in MobLand season 2, having survived the murder attempt by his wife that sets the tone for the show’s upcoming episodes. Luckily, we have the film that launched Ritchie’s career to serve as our compass. Even beyond the striking similarities between Vas Blackwood’s Rory Breaker and Johnny Flynn’s Beast, Lock, Stock and Two Barrels is full of clues about where MobLand is headed next. Harry and the Harrigans might be in for some nasty surprises, but those of us watching at home can expect one heck of a ride. MobLand Release Date March 30, 2025 Network Paramount+ MobLand explores the intense conflict between two rival mob families whose escalating feud endangers both their criminal empires and the lives entangled in their violent world. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Release Date August 28, 1998 Runtime 105 minutes Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a British crime film directed by Guy Ritchie. Released in 1998, it follows a card player and his friends who attempt to rob a neighboring gang after losing a high-stakes poker match, only to become entangled with criminals and stolen firearms in a tangled web of chaos.