Snatch

P.T. Barnum was also credited with saying: A sucker is born every minute.

I thought of these two sayings recently--more the latter than former. I was watching "Snatch", starring Brad Pitt, directed by Guy Ritchie, and I wonder: How many suckers saw this movie, and will come back again and again?

Too many, I fear.

"Snatch" is yet another formulaic bit of cinematic nasty in the Quentin Tarantino manner. Like "Pulp Fiction" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" (the latter directed by the aforementioned Ritchie), "Snatch" superficially comes across as light-hearted Raymond Chandler, but isn't: Again we have characters with dumb and cliched names--Franky Four Fingers, Bullet Tooth Tony, Boris the Blade, Jack the All-Seeing Eye. Again we have a plot that is just plain dumb, so unnecessarily complicated is it. Again creaky plot and narrative devices--titles and verbalized narration--to gloss over the contrived and idiotic.

Guy Ritchie is British. (I think.) As such it is understandable he make films and movies that play up local character, color, and element. What is not understandable, though, is why he makes films such as "Snatch".

The premise (and I use that word fast and loose, by way of definition), now, of "Snatch": Crooked boxing, stolen diamonds, pigs.

That's right: Pigs.

Anyway, after Frankie Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) steals a diamond in Antwerp, Belgium, and returns to London a fellow named Boris the Blade (Rade Sherbedgia), a Russian, and an American, Avi (Dennis Farina), both gangsters, try to take the diamond for their own.

Which proves difficult, as it is in a case, handcuffed to Frankie's wrist.

Follow this so far? Add this: A boxer named Gorgeous George is knocked down, and two promoters (of the shady persausion) find themselves indebted to a crime lord of sorts.

So. . .

To get themselves out of trouble they recruit this fellow, this supposed gypsy played by Brad Pitt to fight.

Why? Relatively-speaking he seems a winner, which is what they want and need badly: He is a bare-knuckle brawler of sorts. He is someone the London crowds and gamblers don't know. And--

I don't want to give too much away, but I have to mention there is the matter of bodies being fed to pigs.

That's right: Pigs.

I know I have previously mentioned the pigs, but given they are the best part of this movie, they should get credit due.

Go To Page: 1 2