Snatch

Wow, this is gonna be a tough one. Okay, there are these two boxing promoters who get caught up in a diamond heist gone awry, in which a young gambling addict gets kidnapped by these guys who were hired by a Russian gangster to retrieve the stolen diamond in question. Still with me? Okay, the promoters also lose their prize fighter, who ends up being replaced by an unintelligible bare-knuckle gypsy boxer, and suddenly find themselves at the mercy of a ruthless gangster who’s strong-arming them to fix the fight or end up at the bottom of a river. All of these cool folks eventually run into one another and rage plenty of more crime, violence and heavy accents onto our laps. Got all that? Aaaaah, forget it…just see the movie, dammit!

Definitely a major feeling of deja-vu round these parts, but not enough to spoil yet another solid Guy Ritchie (also known as Mr. Madonna) British underground gangster funfest. The accents are heavy, the characters are colorful and the style is all over the place, and perfect for a movie as such. Yeah, yeah…I know you’ve probably read this elsewhere, but I can’t review this movie without mentioning LOCK, STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS (8/10) at least once. What I wanted to say was that if you liked LOCK, you will more than likely enjoy this movie. They’ve got similar overall premises, wild and crazy characters, funky soundtracks, over-the-top style shots, etc, etc… If that film wasn’t your bag, I highly doubt that you will appreciate this film either. Vinnie Jones kicks arse!!

The few issues I did have with this film were actually pretty small, but I’ll mention them anyway. The breadth of characters was just a little too much for my taste. I loved Del Toro’s character, Brad Pitt’s, Dennis Farina’s and Vinnie Jones’, but at some point, there were just too many of them to juggle. So when the story would switch over to the two boxing promoters, I wasn’t as “into it” as I was with the hipper characters. Same with the story lines, which took a little too long to get going because of this very fact. I also missed a few lines here and there due to the accent thing (no, not Brad Pitt’s twang, I understand that he was supposed to be incoherent!), and the said feeling of deja-vu, but all those smaller issues aside, I enjoyed the flick and that’s the bottom line. I especially loved the first 15 minutes with the original credit sequence and freeze-frame title card intros and only wish there was more of Del Toro to spread around…like in his own movie or something! Anyhoo, chalk it up to yet another highly stylized caper spitting out rounds of violence, humor and fun-loving criminals for the MTV masses looking for good times and bad muthas. The film’s tag line of “Stealin’ Stones and Breakin’ Bones” is a good one.

Note to Guy Ritchie: You’ve proven yourself to be quite adept in this genre of film, but it would be nice to see you take a shot at something completely different for your next film. Then again, let us remind ourselves that I am but a simpleminded critic typing out words in the basement of the house in which my parents still reside. Sigh.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian