Snatch is Still the Best Guy Ritchie Film

Snatch directed by Guy Ritchie. Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.

In a previous post I wondered whether Guy Ritchie was able to recapture the magic in his latest film, The Gentlemen. The verdict was a tepid sure why not. Whenever we talk about Guy Ritchie’s magic though, we have to trace it back to its source - his two breakout turn of the century films, Snatch and Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels. These are, for all intents and purposes, the same film - gritty, low-budget British crime caper flicks centered around hip, kinetic filmmaking, tremendous acting and dialogue so unctuous you could cut it with a butter knife. They both feature complex narrative structures that became a kind of defining feature of Guy Ritchie’s filmmaking style, and in my experience whichever one you saw first is the one you like the best.

I myself saw Snatch before Lock Stock, and was probably 15 years old at the time, when my gummy little hormone addled brain was still open to formative experiences. It totally blew my mind. I wasn’t much of a film buff at that point in my life, but I especially remember the smash cuts to Frankie Four Fingers gambling while Viva Las Vegas blared in the background and thought they were a great touch. The complexity of the narrative and the way it all carefully built to such an immensely satisfying ending was also, at the time, deeply impressive to me.

But as I look back now I think what really stands out is the way Guy Ritchie created this self-contained world of fully realized, extremely weird and compelling characters all of whom fit together so neatly in his richly imagined version of the British underworld. The film is so good at taking you on a journey through a hyper-stylized fictional world where everything, while loosely based on our own reality, is dialed up to eleven. And yet, every character, no matter how outlandish or bizarre, fits perfectly within the little universe of the film. The most obvious example is the character of Mickey, in what I believe is Brad Pitt’s greatest film performance, with his supernatural one-punch gypsy boxing ability and his ambiguous character arc which is stealthily building toward such a great final act.

None of this would have been possible if Guy Ritchie didn’t have such a strong, clear and clean vision of this imagined world, a vision which he was able to communicate beautifully to the cast. Everyone is on the same page in Snatch, which is essential for making it work because if they weren’t the little idiosyncrasies which make the film such a pleasure just wouldn’t land at all. This is a film that, were it not unified by the singular vision of its creator, would spin apart at the seams at the earliest opportunity.

A lot of the glue that keeps it together - besides the hip visual style the delightfully bizarre characters the richly imagined world and the twisty structure of the plot - is the dialogue. Guy Ritchie displayed in Snatch a real virtuoso talent for writing uniquely dense, complex and hyper-stylized dialogue which could easily sail into silly excess but always seems to stop just short. My favorite bit from the film is Bullet Tooth Tony, calmly seated in the pub at gunpoint, pontificating on the nature of testicles. I daresay, it’s nearly Shakespearean.

Let’s be clear - Snatch is not going to reveal to you any deeply hidden truths about the human condition, the nature of our society or the bonds that bring us together. That is not the kind of film it wants to be, nor is it where Guy Ritchie’s particular genius lies. Snatch is essentially a comic book brought to life, long before that was in vogue or a proven money-printing formula. It is pure sensory spectacle, meant to be experienced and enjoyed. And it is the totality of these efforts, and the way they fit together so perfectly, that makes Snatch not only an enduring classic, but easily the greatest Guy Ritchie film there is.