Snatch

I had a few reservations about watching this film. Although a lot of people I know had raved about it, they had also raved about "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels". The reason I had reservations is that I seem to be one of the few people I know that actually wasn’t blown away by "Lock Stock". I won’t say if my concerns were justified yet as I’ll run through some disk details first.

Plot

There are actually two main plots taking place during the film. The first concerns a boxing promoter Turkish (Jason Statham) and his accomplice Tommy (Stephen Graham) getting involved in an illegal bare-knuckle fight run by the notorious gangster "Brick Top" (Alan Ford). When they’re fighter gets hospitalised by "One Punch' Mickey O’Neil" (Brad Pit) they persuade Mickey to take his place but Mickey doesn’t follow the rules and gets them into a world of trouble.

The other main plot concerns the heist of an 84-carat diamond. The stone goes missing and "Avi" (Dennis Farina) comes over to London from America to find it. With the help of "Doug The Head" (Mike Read) and "Bullet Tooth Tony" (Vinnie Jones), they investigate the stones disappearance. As you’ve probably guessed both these plots end up overlapping and, well I’ll say no more about that.

Video/Audio

There’s nothing to complain about on this disk as far as picture quality goes. The disk comes with a 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen picture. Because of the style of film, you don’t get any bright colour or lush green locations etc. The colouring is intentionally toned down to give a darker feel to capture the right atmosphere.

The disk comes with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. The surround channels get plenty of usage, as does the LFE (Subwoofer) channel, particularly during gunfight scenes and the like. The film also has a very good score that blends in well with the action.

Extras

Disk 1

The main extra on disk 1 is the Commentary Track. The track is from Director Guy Ritchie and Producer Mathew Vaughn. This is a reasonably good commentary although there are a few gaps. It is light-hearted and amusing however, for example during the latter half they keep mentioning how they are being told by "The suits" to do the commentary properly.

The other extra on disk 1 is called Stealing stones. This is a set of deleted scenes that are blended into the film. When you are watching the film a diamond image appears at various points. If you press the enter button the deleted scene will play.

Disk 2

Song Selection is a collection of seven different scenes from the film that have a notable song as part of the score. Soundbites is a collection of interview clips with cast & crew, although each clip is very short they add up to about 25 minutes in total.

Photolibrary is a collection of production photographs that are accompanied with a soundtrack. The photograph automatically changes every few seconds and the extra runs to about 3.5 minutes. Making of Snatch is as you would guess a making of featurette. It runs at about 25 minutes long and is much better than the average Hollywood style making of that tends to get included with disks.

Production Notes is a collection of text only production pages. They are broken into six different sections and some of them are quite lengthy and informative. There’s a collection of six deleted scenes, three of these scenes feature in the Stealing Stones extra on disk 1 and all of them have a directors commentary.

There’s a collection of three Storyboard Comparisons. Each of these can be viewed in three ways, either as full screen film, picture in picture or just storyboards. B-Roll is a short five minute collection of behind the scenes footage.

Finally there’s a collection of TV Spots, Theatrical Trailers and Filmographies. There are also quite a few Easter eggs on this disk and details of these can be found in our exclusive Easter Egg E-Book.

Overall

I’m probably going to go against the grain of majority opinion here by saying that I wasn’t overly impressed with this film. It’s not that it’s a bad film in any way, in fact for me it was much more enjoyable than "Lock, Stock". In fact I find it difficult to put my finger on why I didn’t love it.

I think I just don’t really get on with the whole British gangster film genre in general. I’ve watched two of these recently (Snatch & Gangster No 1), and neither of them did anything for me. One of the problems I have with these kind of films is the way that all the characters are extremely one-dimensional tough guy stereotypes.

The film itself did have some genuinely funny moments and I found myself laughing out loud on several occasions. I also really enjoyed Brad Pitt’s role as the Pike fighter "One Punch Mickey O Neil". However the moments of comedy and the few scenes I really enjoyed weren’t enough to save the film for me.

When I read other peoples reviews and comments on this or "Lock Stock" I often think that there must be something that I just didn’t get as I don’t feel the same way about them. I guess the saying "You can’t please all of the people all of the time" probably applies to this as much as any other film.

All in all it’s not a bad film, and I certainly don’t regret watching it. For me though it’s not one that I will be coming back to again.

Should you get it? Well if you loved "Lock Stock" then I would heartily recommend that you go out and get this now. The two-disk edition itself is excellent, with a good balance of extras and great picture and audio quality. If however "Lock Stock" wasn’t really your bag then I would strongly recommend renting before you buy.