"Snatch" Rated R
*****/*****
Director Guy Ritchie (that's right, Mr. Madonna) has made a terrific film. Fresh off the success of his first feature film, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, he comes out with another low budget tale of the criminal world and all its humorous twists with many of the same cast members (Vinnie Jones, Jason Flemyng.) This time, Ritchie succeeds in making a film (however unlikely it may seem) that crosses a Cohen Brothers's movie with Pulp Fiction with a little Figth Club thrown in. It is as fast and furious (if not much, much more), as gritty, and as fresh, only with a scathing comic edge.
Like any Cohen Brothers's film, Snatch features an incredibly original and well thought out cast of characters. Some examples in this film would be One Punch Mickey O'Neil, the maybe-Irish, maybe-English, mumbling Gypsy bare-knuckled boxer with a Norman Baits type obsession with his mother, Frankie Four-Fingers, the diamond thief with an even more unhealthy obsession with gambling and a briefcase attached to his hand were his missing finger should be. I could go into an equal amount of detail for each character, but I’ll spare you.
The story all starts with the theft of a 82 carat diamond (thanks to Four-Fingers). His Russian helper tells his brother the reputable Boris The Blade that Four-Fingers will be coming to town, and he proceeds to set him up. Boris hires three stupid petty criminals to capture the briefcase while elsewhere several other parties are looking for a taste of the rock too. The other major story running parallel to the diamond (and at some points connecting or weaving in and out of) is the story involving Brad Pitt's wonderful performance as Mickey O'Neil and the dog that connects the two stories. Two small-time hoods and illegal boxing promoters, Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy (Stephen Graham) whose quest for a descent trailer to work out of leads them to Mickey's trailer camp. They almost immediately get mixed up in boxing matches which Mickey refuses to purposely lose in and they get mixed up with a ruthless criminal with a weird desire to feed bodies to pigs.
The ensemble cast of characters are all terrifically well acted and also very, very funny. Guy Ritchie's fantastic and visual pleasing directing is only beaten by his even better script. It is a very fast paced, crazy, farce with an immensely sharp comic wit. The only downfall I can think of, is that some may find the pace a little too fast to follow. I just can't wait to snatch this on video. Sorry, that was bad.
