Guy Ritchie’s best film. It’s a short list really, this and Lock, Stock, but I prefer Snatch, although Two Smoking Barrels is good too. I believe The Gentleman isn’t too bad... but the rest are bloody awful. Back to Snatch. It’s the cast isn’t it. Sure the trademark fast cut gangstar stuff is all here, but it really is a stellar line up. Kicking off with Statham’s OTT wide boy drawl and Del Toro’s comically bonkers Hasidic Jew diamond heist, it nails its colours to the mast. Follow that with what now looks a very dated title sequence introducing Turkish, Tommy, Frankie Four Fingers, Brick Top, Cousin Avi, Mickey, Boris the Blade, Vinny, Sol and Bullet-Tooth Tony, it’s pure comic book. Centred around this rabble we have the now stolen diamond and it’s sale, wrapped up in the murky world of unlicensed boxing. This is where we find Brick Top, who is undeniably genuinely bloody scary in this, although I met Alan Ford once and he was quite a nice bloke. Everything seems fairly run of the mill as you’d expect, although Mike Reid being great as the fake jewish diamond dealer Doug The Head maybe wasn’t expected. What’s even more left-field is Brad Pitt popping up as the incomprehensible prize fighting gypsy. Who proceeds to knock out Turkish’s fighter Gorgeous George, leaving him with no opponent to offer in a promised fight arranged by the vicious pig feeding bastard Brick Top. This is the entire point of Snatch. Take a ton of characters and weave them together in increasingly bizarre happenstance scenarios. So, back to the diamond and the snatching of. Enter Sol, Vinny and the wonderfully confident getaway driver, Tyrone. This is the first of many genuinely hysterical moments as Tyrone squeezes himself out of an old Rover. It’s silly, but bloody funny. This is a comedy after all, complete with more ska and triphop-infused needle drops than is decent. Sol & Vinny are enlisted by Boris the Blade to steal the diamond from Frankie Four Fingers, before he sells it to Cousin Avi through Doug The Head. Got that? Good, back to boxing. Turkish and Tommy hatch the plan to use Mickey in their fight for Brick Top, but this change of fighter gives Brick Top the chance to make demands, namely Mickey taking a dive in the 4th round. Of course that’s not gonna go to plan and neither is the acquiring of the diamond, as Sol & Vinny cock up catching Frankie Four Fingers at a bookies, owned by... Brick Top! and the two worlds collide. If Brick Top is genuinely scary, then it’s now time to meet the yin to his yang, Bullet-Tooth Tony (Vinny Jones), who probably plays the most cartoonish role of all as an east end hitman. To be honest he brings little to it and if we’re being brutally honest, the same can be said of a lot of these characters, it’s all surface fun. It’s Brick Top & Mickey that makes Snatch tick. So despite all the amusing side show from Turkish & Tommy, Avi & Tony, stick Brick Top or Mickey on screen you’ve got gangster gold and when Brick Top directly threatens Mickey, well the touch-paper is lit. Cue Oasis’ ‘Fuckin in the Bushes’ and 8 minutes of bare-knuckle, gun-toting carnage. Snatch is not clever, but it’s very entertaining, silly and satisfying.
8/10
