Snatch
Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Dennis Farina, Jason Statham
Written and directed by Guy Ritchie
Columbia Pictures 200
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2005
103 minute

Snatch, written and directed by Madonna consort Guy Ritchie is a dark and very violent gangster movie with just about as many laughs as violent scenes. It also features an interesting lecture on how to feed a body to the pigs so as to get rid of the evidence. This lecture is delivered by gangster Brick Top Polford (Alan Ford, the narrator of Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels) to a couple of stupid criminals who tried to rob his bookie joint as a cover for getting an 84-carat diamond. Snatch also features Benicio Del Toro getting shot and having his hand chopped off, a bad guy being fed to pit bulls to make him talk, an interesting cut away montage of dogs chasing a rabbit and bad guys chasing another, more interesting montages involving a chase scene or two, an unkillable mad Russian, a couple of bare knuckle fights, guys getting their heads slammed by car doors, and some of the funniest dialogue ever written in a gangster movie.

Snatch starts out with the only competent heist in the movie when Benicio Del Toro (Franky Four Fingers) does a really cool jewelry heist in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, he then goes to London where everything any criminal ever does seems to go wrong. As it is said in Snatch a few times, “You should never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.” The plot then gets quite convoluted as you get Boris The Blade (a mad Russian –there are lots of mad Russians in gangster movies since the Iron Curtain fell), an Irish Traveler (Brad Pitt) and his gang, a pawn shop owner, Sol (played by Lennie James), and his buddy Vincent (Robbie Gee), a couple of small-time crooks named Turkish and Tommy (Jason Statham and Stephen Graham), a New York gangster (Dennis Farina) and a pit bull. Snatch is a series of stories about dumb crooks trying to screw each other and most of them ending up with the short end of the stick.

North American viewers of Snatch will appreciate the subtitles option. As the Dennis Farina (Law And Order) character says, “This country (England) spawned the language but nobody seems to speak it.” These are particularly useful during the scenes when Brad Pitt, who plays an Irish Traveler, talks to his mates.

Snatch, the Deluxe Edition comes with a color photo book, a deck of cards, and a dealer poker chip. This is nothing to write home about. What makes the Snatch Deluxe Edition interesting is the second DVD full of extras including deleted scenes, storyboards, and a whole bunch of hidden stuff you will find if you highlight the “making of”, do not select it, and press the up key a couple three times.

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