Snatch is a 2000 crime/dark-humour comedy directed by Guy Ritchie; in Ritchie’s fashion it has an all-star cast of actors, names such as Brad Pitt, Benicio del Toro, Jason Statham, Dennis Farina and Vinnie Jones (who by the way had a pretty good year and start to his career). His first movie was Lock and Stock, but I would argue that Snatch was the one that truly propelled his career.
Guy Ritchie is one of those directors that has his own trademark when it comes to movies, and by that I mean that he works in such a way that his works are easily recognizable from the others (similar to Hitchcock’s use of long shots and Tarantino’s foot fetish – just saying). His movies tend to be on the action-oriented side, with scripts that use fast-paced and fragmented narration for the exposition and creating overall ‘messy’ situations. In layman’s terms, most of his climatic moments throughout his movies can be described as huge clusterfucks – a lot of things going on at the same time and several plot convenient coincidences that resolve the various situations. For this quirkiness of his, I do appreciated him as a director; I might not find his movies as the most compelling out there, but they are still good action flicks to just detach from reality for one or two hours and enjoy.
Going back to Snatch, it is the story of a diamond being stolen and various groups of crooks trying to get their hands on it and pretty much destroying each other. I don’t think there is much more to add to this given that it is a movie that is best watched than discussed; it has almost no character development and the resolution becomes pretty obvious towards the second act. Maybe one of the few morals that can be extrapolated from Guy Ritchie’s movies is that crime doesn’t pay and that bad guys get what they deserve – although that would be more wishful thinking considering the reality of the world.
PS: if you are a non-native English speaker who watches movies without subtitles and understand at least 80% of what is being said in Snatch, you could probably manage to pass with flying colours the comprehension check on your IELTS, TOEFL or what have you.
I would give this a 6 out of 10 eighty-six-carat diamonds.