Lock, Stock... is a classic. Snatch certainly is not.

Rating: 8/10 (5 December 2004)

Lock, Stock was an instant classic. It was so refreshingly clever in it's style, dialogue, characters and narrative. It was such a fun watch, the film was the very definition of cool. It oozed energy and ideas, and Guy Ritchie worked the humour into the film through the dialogue and the variety of fantastic characters absolutely perfectly.
I do not usually encourage comparisons with a director's previous good work. It makes it far too easy to criticise. But Ritchie leaves one no choice with Snatch. It conveys too much cockiness, it shows too much awareness of his Lock, Stock success. Ritchie is showing off about his talents that brought the deserved recognition and success of his first work and it comes across as just big-headed.
This is disappointing because Snatch also has many very good ideas but they are not realized anywhere near as well as in Lock, Stock. It is a pity. The two central reasons for Lock, Stock working so well was the characters and the script. The characters were marvelous creations and made great use of the crackling dialogue. Snatch does have a couple of great characters (notably Brad Pitt's humorous Pikey and Dennis Farina's wonderful Cousin Avi) but there are two many characters that lack character or are just very annoying. Brick Top made me grind my teeth every time he spoke, which was not the case with the powerful gangster type in Lock, Stock. The script in Snatch is at times on a par with Lock, Stock, but then the cockiness comes through, and it gets ridculous. Vinnie Jones' character seems to be the main culprit (this is not Vinnie's fault, it's just what he got pitted with).
It appears to me that Ritchie was so desperate to give Snatch its own identity separate from Lock, Stock (by trying to be more clever and more funny) that it just comes across as a more far-fetched and less genuine accompaniment. It even includes a moment deliberately there to get the audience remembering their enjoyment of Lock, Stock (Vinnie Jones slamming someones head in a car door). This inclusion is a perfect demonstration of Snatch not being able to become its own film, it needs the audience to acknowledge the better previous film to generate positive emotions when watching this one.
This film is at its best when watching it with your mates and after a few beers, the moments of less than subtle humour becomes almost acceptable then, and the soundtrack is once again superb. Like I said it is a pity, because Snatch could have been so much more. It has many very good moments, but there are others that just aren't effective because they're too ridiculous or said by characters that are not very substantial. Enjoyable yet frustrating. The film is nothing more than that.