The following exchange between 'Ford' (Jason Statham) and 'Susan' (Melissa McCarthy) is crammed into the space of probably 10 seconds at most, with Jason firing off his lines like a Chicago Gangster with a cockney accent and Melissa quietly interjecting, unnoticed, barely giving him time to reload before his next strafing.

Here, nearly a century later, we revisit that style but ramped up on crack, to the point where, after seeing the movie, I had to google the script to see what I missed while laughing my arse off-and laughing it off all over again. To me, the pinnacle of this achievement was the pairing of Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, both fast-talking sultans of sarcasm, in films like 'Bringing Up Baby', 'Holiday' and 'The Philadelphia Story'. In the late 1930s through early 1940s ('38-'40 to be precise), there was a barrage of slick comedies characterized by witty, cheeky, rapid-fire dialogues between characters without so much as a breath between jokes, let alone hold for audience reaction.

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