Guy Ritchie’s Snatch is a brisk, funny crime comedy carried by a well-chosen cast. The plotting keeps us entertained, though the ethnic caricatures and recycled gangland swagger put a limit on the pleasure.
Snatch is a good crime comedy with a troublesome habit of enjoying its own cleverness. Guy Ritchie packs his underworld with people who talk confidently and give us ample reason to doubt them, then keeps their dealings moving quickly enough to sustain the joke. The pleasure comes from watching that confidence survive one complication after another. We need to enjoy the company, because there is not much here to persuade us to care about anyone.
Jason Statham gives Turkish the relatively level delivery this crowded film needs, letting the surrounding performances grow louder without competing for every laugh. Stephen Graham’s Tommy makes useful comic company, but Alan Ford’s Brick Top is the stronger reason to stay. We laughed at Ford’s delivery of the gangland banter, then felt slightly uncomfortable about how easily he had won us over. His matter-of-fact manner allows the threat to register without stopping the comedy for an announcement.
Brad Pitt brings a welcome unpredictability to Mickey O’Neil, the bare-knuckle boxer. So many of these characters seem ready to deliver their allotted joke that his looseness makes a difference: he gives us someone worth watching even when he is not speaking. Ritchie sometimes appears to think a memorable nickname will do most of the work of creating a person. Pitt provides enough presence to make that shortcut less noticeable.
Tim Maurice-Jones’s cinematography gives the gangsters a comic-strip boldness that suits their exaggerated self-importance. The showiness can grow tiring, but it belongs to the same film as these performances, and Ritchie knows how to make a visual flourish serve a joke. Jon Harris’s cross-cutting does more of the essential work, giving the overlapping dealings a rhythm we can follow. He moves between strands with enough assurance that the complicated plotting keeps producing laughs.
Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski’s production design helps keep this underworld cheerfully unreal, which works for the farce. It does less to suggest that anybody has a life beyond the next criminal transaction, a limitation shared by the script. John Murphy’s music adds another push to the pace, although the cutting hardly needs encouragement. We would have welcomed a little more quiet around some of the dialogue; the cast can hold our attention without quite so much assistance.
The writing is where our reservations become harder to overlook. Ritchie’s ethnic caricatures are lazy, and the film repeatedly asks a recognisable type to stand in for a developed character. There is enough wit in the dialogue to make that unnecessary, which makes it more frustrating when an easy stereotype gets the laugh. The banter also grows mannered in places, with too many people sounding pleased by the shape of their own sentences before they have finished saying them.
Against Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, this is a familiar set of pleasures, and Ritchie has done little to change the formula. The stronger performances justify another visit even when the writing does not supply much surprise. At 103 minutes, Snatch is brisk enough to keep that familiarity from becoming a serious burden. If Ritchie’s talkative gangsters already wear you out, though, adding Brad Pitt is unlikely to cure it.
