There are people in this world who wake up and think "what amazing new thing can I discover or create today". Then there are those who wake up and think "what amazing new crime can I commit today?" Snatch is yet another day-in-the-life-of-gangsters film about the latter kind of people, with an exquisitely convoluted plot and plenty of disturbing scenes that make Hannibal pale in comparison.
The first thing done in Snatch is to dispense with the introductions. We are introduced to a bunch of seedy characters such as Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro), Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones), and Boris the Blade aka Boris the Bullet Dodger (Rade Serbedzija). The plot loosely revolves around two boxing promoters Turkish (Jason Statham) and Brick Top (Alan Ford), a boxer Mickey O'Neill (Brad Pitt), and a huge (84 karat) diamond.
Like in Pulp Fiction, this movie slowly plays out the day-to-day happenings among the characters to illustrate how their lives intertwine. The level of suspense in Snatch is high even though the ending is a moralistic one (i.e., the people who are relatively "good" get to "win").
Even though the bringing together of a number of disparate characters has been accomplished successfully before, nowhere has it be done so audaciously and cleverly as in Snatch. Consider the incident where Turkish's partner Tommy (Stephen Graham) throws out a glass of milk which lands on the windshield of a car containing Cousin Avi (Dennis Farina), Bullet Tooth Tony, and a blindfolded Boris the Blade who is locked up in the trunk. Boris escapes his captors and wanders onto the middle of the road and is struck by another car containing two more crooks who are after the stolen diamond. Simply hilarious.
The acting is superb. I was surprised by Brad Pitt's presence in the film (arguably the only "megastar"), but he plays a cocky boxer with an indecipherable accent extremely well. Written and directed by Guy Ritchie, Snatch is a witty high-energy film that is well worth checking out on the big screen.