Snatch, released in 2000, received four awards from 2000-2001, two being the UK Empire Awards for Best British Director (Guy Ritchie) and Best British Actor (Vinnie Jones). Even with the low number of awards, the movie places 117th on IMDb's Top 250 Films with a score of 8.2. I'm surprised that this movie made it to the Top 250, but Titanic didn't. Film people, am I right? The movie was directed by English film director, producer, and screenwriter, Guy Ritchie. The film found critical and commercial success given his previous success with his directorial debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). I can't seem to find where the spark of inspiration for Snatch came from; however, every mistake that Sol, Vincent, and Tyrone made was inspired by various late-night TV shows about real-life crimes gone horribly wrong.
The movie has an ensemble cast starring Jason Statham, Stephen Graham, the late Dennis Farina, Brad Pitt, Alan Ford, Vinnie Jones, and Robbie Gee. The film was shot all on sight in London, England, and neighboring cities and counties. The movie follows two separate storylines that converge with the characters' interactions. We're introduced to the first story with the boxing promoter and the bookmakers, shortly followed by the second story with the incompetent thieves and "Jewish" jewelers who track down a stolen diamond. There seemed to be no inspiration behind the movie, so it was difficult to analyze it by itself. Therefore, for this essay, I'll be explaining Guy Ritchie's style and why it enhances an otherwise flat movie.
If you've seen any Guy Ritchie movies, you know that it is awfully similar to Tarantino. Makes sense since Ritchie stated that Tarantino and Sergio Leone are huge influences on his work. Additionally, he adds that any film he's ever watched has impacted this filmmaking. Ritchie cited The Long Good Friday (1980), The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966), Seven Samurai (1954), and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) as his favorites. He also cites the influence of the Krays, stating that it's inevitable to draw inspiration from their crimes because of their nature and impact on British pop culture and climate.
Firstly, you know it's a Guy Ritchie movie in the first five minutes because of the stylish opening sequences. We see the exaggerated opening titles followed by music and character introduction, which sets the audience's expectation for the movie very high. The role of music in his films is very prominent, almost acting like an additional character (like silence is in A Quiet Place). It adds to the scene's tone and interacts with the movements on screen, changing with each storyline.
The movie's most "Ritchie" aspect is the characters themselves. Many bold characters all play a significant role, something familiar in gangster movies but uncommon among the rest of Hollywood films. Not only are there many characters, but they all also have their own nicknames and unique descriptions. You've got Bullet Tooth Tony, a character who got shot six times in a row and had the bullets molded into gold and fixed them into two of his teeth. Then there's Boris the Blade / Boris the Bullet Dodger, who can dodge a bullet (figuratively) and seems to be unkillable until one of the last scenes. However, unique to Ritchie is how he writes the characters' repeated movements to ensure the audience doesn't forget whose nickname belongs to who. Boris was run over and shot multiple times throughout the movie. Yet, he miraculously remained alive until Bullet Tooth Tony (who brandished his teeth a couple times) emptied an entire magazine into Boris. Then there's the pig symbol in both storylines where Brick Top explains his method of body disposal: feeding human flesh to hungry pigs. He uses this threat to scare the thieves, but they're a little dumb to understand the danger. Brick Top threatens to feed Turkish, Mickey, and Tommy to the pigs if they don't lose the match in the fourth round. Lucky he owns a pig farm, right? Another Ritchie character aspect is cockney slang. With cockney slang, you've obviously got fast dialogue. I used to go to British schools before high school and have had my fair share of listening to cockney. My math teacher even spoke in cockney (which made most of the class fail because they couldn't understand what she was saying) but obviously without all the cursing. If you're not used to hearing cockney, you would definitely benefit from watching Ritchie movies with subtitles. The use of cockney slang and integrating the Pikeys allows Ritchie to touch on the British class system, albeit not for long, and not significantly. In addition to nicknames and accents, the characters have their own style of clothing that differentiates them from one another. However, in the case of Turkish and Tommy, their fashions are similar because of their sibling-type relationship. It's assumed that Tommy copied Turkish, but Turkish is a big softie, so he just lets him.
Most significantly, a Guy Ritchie movie is about fast-paced and energetic action scenes and placing his characters in violent situations. Ritchie uses fast-cutting and slow-motion ingeniously to build momentum in the story and create a high-impact viewing experience. Because of this, Ritchie is known as the "Jump Cut Specialist," a well-deserved nickname of his own. He often puts his characters in shootouts, foot chases, bare-knuckle fights, and full-on boxing games to show off the skills of his cinematographer and editors. These aspects are what make Ritchie movies so entertaining to watch. The jump cuts and slow motions also add to his movies' comedic part. Not belly-aching comedy, but the kind that just makes you want to cringe from second-hand embarrassment.
If you look at Snatch from a story perspective, it isn't anything exciting. The plot is pretty mediocre at best, and if made by anyone else, it wouldn't have succeeded as much as it had. However, it did succeed, and that was only made possible because of the expertise of Ritchie. Ritchie answered honestly when questioned on his thought process: "My creative process has never been something I can put into words. It's very random, very scattered and can sometimes lead down dark alleyways and dead ends." If I were to interpret what Ritchie is trying to say here, it's thought vomit. Everything he thinks about, he writes it into the script and sews them together with dialogue, fights, cinematography, and editing. He presents the films as it comes to him in his mind with limited editing. While I thought that Snatch was an entertaining movie, I felt it didn't say much. It acted as a reflection and documentary, almost, of events rather than telling a deeper story.
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