Snatch

View Date: January 21st, 2001

Cast :

Writer and Director: Guy Ritchie 

Author Stephen King has always been a sort of mentor and inspiration to me.  Ever since I read Cujo in 1983, I was hooked.  Since then, my style has slightly reflected the horror masters, coming nowhere near the quality.  As with all idols who are scrutinized however, I have found my flaws with Mr King.  Sometimes he tends to get so many wonderful ideas in his head and so many things started, that he doesn’t quite know how to finish things. So he just ties them up in a quick little bundle and leaves you curious and thirsting.  Guy Ritchie has now created a cinematic equivalent to this tendency in Snatch, his highly anticipated follow-up to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  This time around, Ritchie infuses a bit more humour, pokes a bit of fun at his homeland and again creates some memorable characters and scenes.  Unfortunately, he tries too hard to capitalize on his past success, by making a faded carbon of his debut.  The originality has worn off, the twists and links come off as forced, and just when it seems to be developing its own personality, the movie sinks amidst its own heavy expectations.

As in Lock, the plot becomes a labyrinthian tale of characters with a common tie.  This tie may not involve all the characters, but it does bring each story into commonality.   Instead of guns and money, it is a delicious 16 karat diamond, the size of a baby’s fist.  Each have their own reasons for wanting it, and in their journey to get it, they will encounter each other, act, react and interact for about 120 minutes.  When the dust clears however, not much is left to make sense of really.  We have two small time boxing promoters, who end up indebted to one big time promoter due to an encounter with a bare knuckle boxing gypsy (Pitt) with a seriously unintelligible dialect.  Meanwhile, we have a master jewel thief with a gambling weakness (Del Toro) his bosses (Farina and Reid), three amateur hitmen and one greedy Russian (sorry, no partridge in a pear tree)  The rest of the  movie becomes the intertwining of their stories which does not generate as much interest as Lock, and finally does not tie up as neatly either. It may seem unfair to compare these two movies, but when you blatantly carbon copy a successful idea, then change the names and focus to protect the innocent, the comparisons are inevitable and deserved. When something is seen for the first time, and it is original and creative, it generates curiosity to keep the audience watching to see what’s going to happen next.  Lock did that.  Snatch generates a curiosity of what’s going to happen next, but under the auspice of hoping that it somehow become clearer.  Unfortunately, the more the mirror gets wiped, the fuzzier things get.  When the moments of clarification come, they are as empty and hollow as the mirror which reflects it.  There is no doubt that Ritchie is one of the up and coming directors, along with Atom Egoyan, Darren Arronofsky, Kevin Smith and Neal LaBute who will carry Hollywood into the next generation.  He shows flashes of this in some of the dialogue (“Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity”) inside jokes (Pitt’s accent, which was in response to people who claimed they couldn’t understand the first film) and his quick cut filming techniques and angles (Farina’s transatlantic alcohol depressed flights of frustration) but these cannot overcome a story that fails to be more than the sum of its parts.

Even some nice performances cannot save the day.  None really standout, but Jones, again playing a mean guy with a heart of gold, shines in his moments onscreen. He shows that athletes with bad dispositions can indeed transition their talents into intimidation, rather than just shocking, freakish behavior. (see Dennis Rodman) Pitt’s performance is quite animated, and some fun the first time or two, but after awhile, even he gets swallowed in mire and muck that masks itself as twisting film noir.  Farina, who plays things best when his sarcastic nature comes out, keeps things consistant, but overall, every performer becomes a pawn in Ritchies chess game, not knowing what lies around each corner, and when the ultimate revelations come, each seems so tired and disenchanted, that the spirit of what could have been gets lost.

Ultimately, Snatch shows that Ritchie has misinterpreted the famous phrase “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”.  Ritchie hit the big time, and opened some eyes in Hollywood with his Tarantino inspired debut, but apparently he couldn’t leave well enough alone.  Unlike Tarantino, who varies his projects, only throwing in similarities to his previous tales, Ritchie has almost taken his first film, added some humor and a big rock, and regurgitated it back at us again to see if it sticks.  Some parts do, but the majority drains slowly down, dragging, wandering, then meandering into oblivion leaving the audience hungry for more.  King and Tarantino have rebounded, and learned from their lessons, and Ritchie shows all the ability of being able to do the same.  Skip this one, and watch Lock again, to appreciate even more what could have been. ($$ out of $$$$)

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