Snatch

(Ritchie, 2000)

For his second full-length film, Guy Ritchie obviously thought it best not to deviate too greatly from the winning formula of his wildly successful debut, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Some might argue he barely deviated at all. Once again, there’s an expensive piece of treasure that everyone wants and once again, there’s a veritable army of twitchy sociopaths tearing Old London Town apart in order to put their hands on it.

The budget is bigger this time around, but so too is the cast. Whereas Lock, Stock gave us a manageable number of crooks, thugs and gangsters to chase around, Snatch liberally piles bodies into the mix. You only really need to pay attention to maybe three or four of them; the rest, it seems, are simply there to act as comic foils or swear at opportune moments.

Jason Statham and Vinnie Jones more or less made their careers off the back of Lock, Stock…‘s success, and with Snatch it stands to reason that Ritchie knew Hollywood would be paying close attention this time around. To this end, Statham and Jones reprise their roles from Lock, Stock… in everything but name: Jones with his car-vs-skull brutishness and Statham with his laconic smart-assery. Neither were particularly good in this film, but it doesn’t seem to have done them any harm in the long run.

On its own merits, Snatch is decent enough; it’s very funny in parts, and some of the cast give great performances. Brad Pitt, in particular, puts on a hell of a show as an indecipherable bare-knuckle gypsy boxing champion. Elsewhere, though, otherwise strong performances are made underwhelming by the insertion of laborious monologues and needless posturing.

The story skips merrily along, pitching us the kind of plot twists that made Lock, Stock… great. The soundtrack, too, is just as strong as its predecessor’s. The film oozes style, but in parts the effect is scuppered by the feeling that it knows how stylish it is. We’re supposed to be impressed by this, but really it would have been a lot more impressive if Snatch had ended up more than a tarted-up facsimile of what had come before.

---

tl;dr: Snatch is more polished, louder and more crowded than its gritty forerunner. The overall effect, though, is of a director who seems merely to be going through the motions. The film would have been far punchier were it not for the abundance of pointless dialogue. A shame, really, because in places this film is actually pretty entertaining.