A Music Video Populated by P.G. Wodehouse Characters Updated to Modern London's Crime World

Rating: 10/10 (14 October 2011)

Cinematic prototypes lean toward having an agelessness about them, an idiosyncratic appeal that exceeds years and settings. A relatively new model has been trying its frontier, the consciously stylized gangster. These incessantly stylish, exaggeratedly talkative, morally vague antiheroes have crowded the cinema backdrop. An exciting cross-reference to the question of whether or not the stylistically cutting-edge criminal is consistent and attention-grabbing enough to last is put into high-gear in Guy Ritchie's sophomore raid on the modern London gangland. Packed with jump-cuts, high shutter speed, a loud multi-generational pop soundtrack, harsh locales, style-sprayed dialogue and heaps of comic irony, Snatch. can be seen as the premier template for hyper-stylized testosterone cinema of and since the new millennium, except a closer going-over---and you'd not be in the minority if you gave it numerous---exposes something even more thrilling.
Snatch. is essentially a manic fusion, mongrelizing the Gen X and Y movie gangster with a varied range of archetypal potboiler constituents. Indeed, there are enough quaint, glib villains in it to give Mamet, Tarantino and even Scorsese at least a blip on the radar screen of their challengers, but at its core is a classic caper comedy. It's not ridiculous, actually, to picture Cary Grant playing Mickey fifty, sixty years ago were that heyday the time for this fast-paced amalgam of the underworld mythologies of the fixed boxing match and the diamond heist. Ritchie is the cinematic counterpart of a disc jockey, sampling traditional British thriller plotting and mixing it with ultra-modern atmospheric ingredients to form a witty and exhilarating mélange.
Ritchie's rearing in commercials and music videos give Snatch and its chronic freeze-frames a gasping pace, owing to cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones and editor Jon Harris, who move heaven and earth. John Murphy's score lightheartedly varies on Jewish and Slavic formulas that sustains a tongue-in-cheek tone of buoyancy, at the same time the production design suggests one after another frayed London lower-class scene with stark naturalism. Ritchie keeps everything whirling frantically and cheerfully along, with all the audacious excitement of a bright kid intoxicated by the utter thrill of flying his own kite.
The chaotic, tricky plot is given its much-needed bookends by Turkish, an unlicensed boxing promotoer attempting to expand by dealing with formidable figures like many-tentacled crime lord Brick Top. In an effort to rig an impending match for Brick Top, Turkish solicits Brad Pitt's movie-stealing gypsy Mickey, who appears incapable of correctly taking a dive.
Across town, a flawless gem has been stolen by Benicio Del Toro's unassuming Frankie Four Fingers, who is expected to deliver it to America for Cousin Avi. Though, as one might imagine, there are snags: Rade Serbedzija's calculating Boris The Blade wants the diamond, and it's up to hired gun Bullet Tooth Tony help retrieve it.
As the film begins to unfold, the various cliques of characters appear to trail independent fates until Ritchie's cunning script lures them together in the last 40 minutes. Less domino-like in structure than Lock, Stock, Snatch manages these innumerable brackets of people and interlaces their paths. The dialogue is lively like its predecessor's, though cheekier instead of riotous, while composed in the same breed of Cockney Runyonesque.
The quality of more peripheral performances is conspicuously flimsy, but let's not lose sight of the overall upshot. The performances fluctuate in quality, but all are distinguished by a good-humored liveliness. Big splashes include Dennis Farina's frustrated American Avi, excavating a cornucopia of crass-American-traveler humor, Vinnie Jones' pokerfaced drollness as a more gentlemanly, if bullet-toothed, variation on his Big Chris in Lock, Stock, and Alan Ford's menacing eccentric Brick Top. Of exclusive reference is the impeccably cast dog that features more significantly in the action than we initially expect. Less flashy, but softly holding the whole lot together, is Jason Statham's bone-dry breakthrough as Turkish, who along with his sheepish partner, the memorable Stephen Graham as Tommy, gets more than he bargained for.
This indelibly quotable audience fave is far from faultless cinematic art, but it's an electrifying exercise and a halcyon cult-smash stand-out by Ritchie. For those who grieve for the old Ealing comedies or the farces of McCarey and Wilder, and don't disapprove of a spot of gunplay, blood spatter and dismemberment, or an immensity of profanity generously strewn throughout, this is a refreshing and stirring experience. May the post-modern gangster standard keep on coming, as long as they keep as imaginative, as hilarious and as absorbing as the hyperlink tapestry of Snatch.