Finally. . .someone gets it right!

Rating: 9/10 (12 April 2001)

I wanted to hate this movie. I really did. I didn't want to like a film that rips off "Pulp Fiction" so shamelessly. I didn't want to like a film by someone who married the world's worst actress. I didn't want to like a film with Brad Pitt in it. I wanted to hate this film so much, but I wound up loving it.
"Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels" was Ritchie's "True Romance". "Snatch" is his "Resevoir Dogs". Ritchie succeeds where all the other Tarantino wannabes fail for two big reasons. First, because he is the only post-Tarantino filmmaker who even approaches Tarantino's intellect. He knows it's not just about swearing and carnage. It's also about new ideas and cool dialogue. The second reason he succeeds where others fail is that he takes the now-familiar formula away from Los Angeles and to London, where he takes full advantage of the range of British dialects to be heard in and around town.
The story involves a jewel heist, underground boxing, and the mobsters who run those enterprises. The cast is uniformly great. Dennis Farina is excellent as the jewel fence Avi. Benicio Del Toro is just plain cool (as always) as Frankie Four-Fingers. Alan Ford frightens as Brick Top. And Vinnie Jones in the role of Bullet-Tooth Tony could teach John Wayne and Clint Eastwood a thing or two about being a tough guy.
As to Brad Pitt: In the first half of the '90's he was a shallow pretty boy. In the second half, he was pompous and overrated, trying too hard to live down his looks. But in "Snatch" he finally delivers a performance that I actually liked as Mickey, a gypsy boxer who seems at first glance to be only comic relief, but turns out to be a pivotal character.
The film is not perfect. One questions why everyone has a silly nickname, and some of Ritchie's stylistic flourishes serve only to distract from the story.
But overall, the film is wonderful. Six years after "Pulp Fiction" spawned countless bad rip-offs such as "Romeo + Juliet" and "2 Days in the Valley", somebody figured out how to do it right.
9 out of 10