Snatch

`Snatch', written and directed by Guy Ritchie is by far one of my favorite films of all time – it is easily in my personal Top Thirty. In the film, about (what else?) several schemes that happen to go very wrong yet manage to intertwine and (for better or worse) resolve themselves in the end, Ritchie assembles one of the funniest cast of characters in recent memory. Let's see if we can keep this straight:

Turkish (Jason Statham) and his partner Tommy (Stephen Graham) are amateur boxing promoters who, after their premier fighter is wounded, have to find a replacement to fight, or one of the meanest guys in London, Brick Top (Alan Ford), who just happens to run the boxing matches and stands to make a lot of money off of the fight is going to impart his unique brand of justice on them. Enter Mickey (Brad Pitt) the gypsy who knocked their fighter out, who is an unintelligible drunk with quite a right hook. Meanwhile, there is a diamond `the size of a fist' that has been stolen by Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro). On his way back from London to America where he is planning on fencing the diamond, trouble ensues, and his fence, Cousin Avi (Dennis Farina) is forced to come to London to find both Franky and the diamond with the help of characters like Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) and Doug `The Head' Denovitz (Mike Reid). Of course, this can't happen easily, as there are a trio of inept thieves on the trail of the diamond as well as my personal favorite character in the film, Boris `The Blade' Yurinov (Rade Serbedzija) – or as he's better known, `Boris the Bullet Dodger'.

Did you get all that? The performances by all of the above actors, and several more that I didn't even mention are all really good, particularly Brad Pitt's. Every single actor in `Snatch' looks like they are having one hell of a good time working in the film. This story, while complex and with many ramifications from the core plot is absolutely brilliant and a lot of fun. There are many one-liners that I still personally use four years after first seeing the film, and the intricate weaving of the characters to tell a very simple heist story is just SO good. `Snatch' would be a great film due to its story alone, but Guy Ritchie's direction is so dead on, the film transcends brilliant and becomes FAN-insert your choice of expletive here-TASTIC. The slick cinematography, lightning-fast pacing and fun camera angles are right on target with the story. Add on a great soundtrack that spans Oasis, techno and a traditional-sounding Hasidic song and Ritchie has presented the viewer with an instant classic.

While this was not the first time I had seen the film `Snatch', it was the first time I'd watched the film knowing that I would have to analyze it slightly in order to funnel my thoughts from the film just being `Phenomenal!' to `Phenomenal because…..' While I can certainly be classified as an unabashed Madonna fan, and have been for the last two decades, I REALLY hope that Ritchie decides to drop his wife from his film work and not continue on the `Swept Away' path, rather, to get back to the work that has earned him well-deserved high praise. Sorry Madge.

--Shelly