A Stylish & Engaging Thriller... Congratulations Guy Ritchie!

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2001)

Guy Ritchie has directed a stylish and engaging thriller the likes of which I have not seen in many years (I kept having feelings not experienced since "Pulp Fiction" and perhaps even 1985's "No Surrender" - but that was a long time ago and an altogether very different film). I enjoy good thrillers and this one is top-notch. Yes, there is a lot of violence - including unlicensed, bare-knuckle boxing - but the omnipresent humour lets the audience accept the violence as the context within which stories like this happen. It's hard to wince when a dog in the background is squeaking because of a squeaky toy it had swallowed whole earlier in the film. Not tremendously clever but it works very well in this movie.
The acting? Top drawer stuff. Jason Statham's "Turkish" is excellent and even Brad Pitt's performance is very good. Alan Ford's "Brick Top" is absolutely wonderfully delivered - this character is positively scary - and Dennis Farina ("Cousin Avi") is quite good as well. Sure, none of the roles called for much emotional range but there were no embarrassing accents or out-of-character moments which destroy lesser outings. The entire cast merits high marks - as much for supplying the comic relief as for ensuring that no part of this movie dragged.
The story? It's actually an amalgam of several stories where the weaving is at such a breakneck speed that you have to keep on top of the cast of characters or you run the risk of losing the thread altogether. The stylish introduction of all the main characters at the beginning of the movie turns out to be not only style but substance.
While the story starts out as a standard heist plot, it departs from it very quickly as one group after another is brought into contact with - and possession of - the stolen gem. The interesting thing is that story ends up being as much about "One Punch" Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt), an Irish gypsy (called "Pikey's" apparently) as it is about this giant diamond. The real interest in this story comes from the connections between the quest for this diamond and the story about Mickey O'Neill's abbreviated boxing career.
If you can keep up with its pace, "Snatch" is an excellent thriller to go see and will certainly be first class video rental fodder in the future. Congratulations to Guy Ritchie - I'll be renting his earlier outing, "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" sometime soon. For the time being, I give this one a 9.