A Glorious, Enthusiastic Mess of a Film

Rating: 7/10 (4 September 2001)

Guy Ritchie's `Snatch' is a highly entertaining crime caper featuring innovative (and often brilliant) direction as well as a horde of memorable, over-the-top characters. The direction and the characters are so good, in fact, that it's quite easy to overlook the threadbare story buried at the bottom of the film. `Snatch' is a great example of a film that excels at flash, flair and extraneous details . . . but has some significant problems with its basic foundation. The end results are still remarkably good, but the flaws  while covered up incredibly well -- are enough to keep `Snatch' from achieving the greatness that it comes so close to grasping. (Or snatching, as the case may be.)
The film begins with underground fight promoter Turkish (Jason Statham), a decent guy running with a bad crowd, agreeing to put one his fighters in a fixed bout for the big-time criminal Brick Top (Alan Ford). Meanwhile, Franky Four Fingers (Del Toro), who has recently stolen an eighty-five carat diamond for his boss Cousin Avi (Farina), has decided to place some bets on Brick Top's fixed fight. Nothing goes even remotely right for anyone, of course, and soon there's a mad search on for the diamond by a number of low-life hoodlums, as well as some problems arising from Turkish's new bare-knuckle brawler, a Gypsy named Mickey (Brad Pitt). . .

`Snatch' is a film that's pure eye candy, which is why it's such a joy to watch. Give Guy Ritchie massive amounts of credit -- the man's quite a director. He's a master at editing scenes together in innovative ways, and putting together otherwise ordinary scenes with ingenious and creative methods. `Snatch' is a veritable how-to handbook on visual directing techniques, and it's almost a downright guilty pleasure watching Mr. Ritchie construct this film into such a vibrant, dazzling-looking finished product. The same must be said for the characters, who seem to have come from a place somewhere between `Dick Tracy' and `Reservoir Dogs' -- each and every character in `Snatch' is a distinct and memorable creation, worthy of starring in their own movie, every if they're only on screen for a few moments. (Cousin Avi, Doug the Head, Frankie Four Fingers, Boris the Blade .. . good gravy, where does Guy Ritchie get these wonderful names?) All the characters in `Snatch'  and the terrific actors playing them -- are simply awesome. If any deserve special mention, though, it's Jason Statham as the beleaguered fight manager Turkish and Vinnie Jones as the villainous Bullet Tooth Tony. (Any mainstream action film producer would be wise to cast Vinnie Jones as the main villain in any upcoming summer blockbuster; it's almost scary how well Mr. Jones can play a cold-blooded killer.) The characters are an utter joy to watch, and they're filmed in such a highly original and entertaining manner that `Snatch' actually stands apart from other standard action films and independent Tarantino wannabes as something worth watching.
The real problem with `Snatch', though, is that for all its wonderful scenes and awesome characters . . . there's simply not enough story to go around. There's two basic storylines for the film, both pretty good -- but even combined, these storylines are barely enough to last an hour. On the commentary track for the DVD of `Snatch', Guy Ritchie states that his goal for the film was to make a lean and mean story -- well, he succeeded at that goal, but the lean, mean story gets completely bogged down from the weight of its overwhelming horde of characters. Despite how good they are, `Snatch' either would've benefited from a reduction of its cast, if only to provide more time to focus on the storylines; or the addition of a third storyline giving some of the characters more to do also could've helped. (It also might've helped if there was more correlation between the two storylines; the relationship between the two is cursory at best. What's going on in one storyline usually has only slight, minor repercussions affecting the other, and most of the time `Snatch' feels like two distinct and separate small films.)
`Snatch' is a terrific joy ride of a film. The only problem is that the ride really doesn't go anywhere. Still, `Snatch' is one of the best-looking films of the year, and even if it's not necessarily the most satisfying of films, it's certainly a heck of a lot of fun. Worth checking out, for sure. Grade: B+