Snatch and its' off the wall characters will make you laugh

Rating: Null/10 (25 September 2001)

*Please note that I do not feel I have given any of the important or "good bits" away in my review, but I do have a lot of detail in it, so if you are into watching movies without details about them beforehand (wait...why are you reading reviews then ??), then you might want to skip this one !*
I've never seen such an eclectic group of actors, as well as characters, that worked so well together. Snatch brings together Hollywood major-leaguers Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, and Dennis Farina and throws them into an off the wall British comedy with hilarious results.
Loosely, Snatch is about a diamond heist, gone horribly wrong.
Frankie Four Fingers (del Toro) and friends pose as Hasidic Jews to steal an 84 carat diamond in Antwerp. The plan is for Frankie to take the diamond back to New York (via a stopover in London) and give it to Avi (Farina).
However, he is waylaid in London by Boris the Blade, whom he goes to for a gun. Boris is tipped off by one of Frankie's collaborators (who just happens to be Boris's brother) about the stone, and about Frankie's gambling addiction (how do you think he came to be minus a finger ?). Boris devises a plan to get the diamond for himself.
Enter a slew of characters that are as hilarious as they are diverse:
Sol (Lennie James) and Vinnie (Robbie Gee), petty thieves running a not-entirely-reputable pawn shop, and their oversized getaway driver (`What the hell can he get away from ?' Vinnie asks Sol at one point) Tyrone (newcomer Ade); Brick Top (Alan Ford), a vicious modern day gangster that arranges (and rigs) all kinds of illegal fights (of both the animal and human variety); and last but certainly not least Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy (Stephan Graham), partners (but not the kind that `hold hands and take windy walks,' as Turkish puts it) in running an illegal bare-knuckle boxing ring.
What follows is so fast-paced and intertwined that it is hard to describe it.
In short, Tommy has to buy a new caravan-cum-office for Turkish from some low-brow gypsy types, and ends up getting ripped off. So he puts his boxer Gorgeous George up against one of them and losesso badly in fact, that for several minutes he thinks Gorgeous is dead. Turkish and Tommy have to inform Brick Top that they've `lost Gorgeous George' (`How the hell can you lose him ? It's not as though he's inconspicuous, now is it ?'), which puts them in his debt, not a good place to be. They make a deal to replace Gorgeous with the Pikey (a derogative term for the gypsy-trailer trash type that he's one of) that knocked out Gorgeous, and Brick Top insists that the Pikey throw the fight.
Intertwined with that, Doug `the Head' Denovitz (Mike Reid) informs cousin Avi that Frankie Four Fingers is going to be at that illegal boxing match. Avi is so furious with the idea that Frankie will wager his diamond, that he flies to London to seek him out (and trust me, Avi loathes the idea of going to London) and stop him. At the same time, Vinnie and Sol are set to rob Brick Top's bookies and get the diamond, when things really go to pieces. There is no money for them to steal, due to the fact that a fighter was replaced at the last minute, and they end up minus a gun and locked behind the security door, in what is claimed to be a mock-up of a true life robbery attempt here in the US.
I'm really giving too much away here, but I loved this movie so much that I find it hard to keep it to a minimum when discussing it. I haven't yet found a review that truly did it justice, and I'm sure I'm not doing much better. But trust meeven if you're not `into British humor' you'll love Snatch.