Snatch (film)

Snatch is a 2000 crime comedy film written and directed by Guy Ritchie, featuring an ensemble cast and set in the London criminal underworld. The film contains two intertwined plots, one dealing with the search for a stolen diamond, the other with a small-time boxing promoter (Jason Statham) who finds himself under the thumb of a ruthless gangster (Alan Ford) who is ready and willing to have his subordinates carry out severe and sadistic acts of violence.

The film shares themes, ideas, and motifs with Ritchie's first film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It is also filmed in the same visual style and features many of the same actors.

Plot
A gang of robbers dressed as Orthodox Jews steal an 86 carat diamond, along with a stash of smaller diamonds, during a heist in Antwerp. Franky Four-Fingers, the leader of the gang, goes to London to see diamond dealer Doug The Head on behalf of New York City jeweler and Jewish-American organized crime figure Cousin Avi to fence the diamonds. During the getaway, one of the other robbers tells Franky, who is leaving for London, to obtain a gun from arms dealer and ex-KGB agent Boris The Blade. He then later calls Boris, his brother, and tells him to steal the diamond from Franky before he can turn it over to Doug.

Meanwhile, unlicensed boxing promoter and slot machine shop owner Turkish is persuaded by crime boss Brick Top to put his boxer Gorgeous George in a match against one of Brick Top's boxers. However, when Turkish sends his partner Tommy and Gorgeous George to purchase a caravan from a group of Irish Travellers, George is challenged to a fistfight by Traveller bare-knuckle boxing champion Mickey O'Neil, who knocks George out with a single punch. Turkish persuades Mickey to replace the injured George in his upcoming match by agreeing to purchase a new caravan for Mickey's mother. Brick Top grudgingly agrees, but only on the condition that Mickey will throw the fight in the fourth round.

Boris gives Franky a revolver in exchange for a favour: Franky is to place a bet on Boris' behalf at Brick Top's bookies. Avi, knowing Franky has a gambling addiction, flies to London with his bodyguard Rosebud to pick up the diamond personally. Boris hires Vinny and Sol, two pawnbrokers and small-time crooks, to rob Franky while he is at the bookies. The robbery goes awry when they crash their car into Franky's van while trying to park, trapping Franky inside. Sol, Vinny, and their getaway driver Tyrone are caught on camera and find no money at the bookies, since Gorgeous George's cancellation means that all bets are off, but manage to kidnap Franky in their escape. At their pawn shop, Sol and Vinny hold Franky captive with a sack over his head. Upon Boris' arrival, Sol and Vinny demand he gives them half of the cash when he sells the diamond, during which Vinny utters Boris' name. To cover the mention of his name Boris kills Franky by shooting him in the head, and leaves with the diamond.

Instead of throwing the fight, Mickey once again knocks his opponent out with a single punch. Infuriated, Brick Top seizes Turkish's savings and demands that Mickey fight again and lose. Mickey refuses to fight again unless Turkish buys an even better caravan for his mother, but Turkish has no money to pay for it. In order to force Mickey to fight, Brick Top's men trash Turkish's arcade and burn down Mickey's mother's caravan, killing her. They then track down Tyrone, Sol, and Vinny to kill them for robbing his bookies. Sol bargains for their lives by offering Brick Top the stolen diamond, and is given 48 hours to retrieve it.

Avi and Doug hire Bullet-Tooth Tony to help them find Franky. When the trail leads to Boris, they kidnap him and retrieve the diamond, while being closely pursued by Sol, Vinny, and Tyrone. Turkish and Tommy, who are on their way to purchase a gun from Boris, are driving on the same stretch of road at the time. When Tommy throws Turkish's carton of milk out of their car window, it splashes over Tony's windscreen, causing him to crash, killing Rosebud. Boris escapes from the wreck only to be hit by Tyrone's car.

Tony and Avi are confronted by Sol, Vinny, and Tyrone at a pub but Tony intimidates them into leaving by commenting that their pistols are all replicas while his handgun is real. The wounded Boris arrives with an assault rifle and a grenade launcher looking for the diamond, but is shot and killed by Tony, who also wounds Tyrone. Sol and Vinny leave the wounded Tyrone and escape with the diamond, which Vinny hides in his pants. When Tony catches up to them, they tell him that the diamond is back at their pawn shop.

Once there, Vinny pretends to have misplaced the diamond, then accuses his dog, which he got earlier from the Travellers, of eating it. When Avi tells Tony to kill the dog, Vinny gives in and produces the diamond from his pants, but the dog snatches the diamond away and runs off, presumably back to the Travellers' campsite. Avi wildly fires at the fleeing dog, accidentally killing Tony. Avi then gives up and returns to New York City.

Mickey agrees to fight to avoid more carnage, but gets so drunk after his mother's wake that Turkish fears he will not make it to the fourth round. If he fails to go down in the fourth round as agreed, Brick Top vows that his men will murder Turkish, Tommy, Mickey, and all the Travellers.

At the fight, Mickey makes it to the fourth round as per Brick Top's plan, and is knocked down by his opponent. But at the last moment, Mickey recovers and once again knocks out his opponent with one punch. Outside the arena, as Tommy, Turkish, and Mickey try to run for their lives, Brick Top and his men are ambushed and killed by the Travellers. It is revealed that this has all been planned out by Mickey to avenge his mother. In fact, instead of throwing his fights as instructed, he had been secretly betting on himself to win - making huge profits, due to Brick Top driving up his odds.

The next morning, Turkish and Tommy find the Travellers' campsite deserted as Mickey and "the pikeys" have escaped with their winnings. When confronted by the police, Turkish and Tommy cannot explain why they are there, until Vinny's dog suddenly appears and they claim to be walking it. On their way back, they cross paths with Sol and Vinny, who are arrested for hiding Franky and Tony's bodies in the boot of their car. Sol and Vinny watch in defeat as Turkish and Tommy drive away with the dog and the diamond.

Turkish and Tommy take the dog to a veterinarian to extract a squeaky toy that it had swallowed, and consequently discover the diamond in its stomach. They consult Doug about selling the diamond and he calls Avi, who returns to London to purchase it.

Cast

 * Jason Statham as Turkish
 * Stephen Graham as Tommy
 * Dennis Farina as Abraham "Cousin Avi" Denovitz
 * Brad Pitt as Mickey O’Neil
 * Alan Ford as "Brick Top" Pulford
 * Benicio del Toro as Franky Four-Fingers
 * Robbie Gee as "Vinny" Vincent
 * Lennie James as "Sol" Solomon
 * Ade as Tyrone
 * Rade Šerbedžija as Boris "The Blade" Yurinov
 * Vinnie Jones as Bullet Tooth Tony
 * Adam Fogerty as Gorgeous George
 * Mike Reid as Doug "The Head" Denovitz
 * Nicola and Teena Collins as Alex and Susi
 * Sorcha Cusack as Mrs O'Neil
 * Jason Flemyng as Darren
 * Goldie as Bad Boy Lincoln
 * Velibor Topić as The Russian
 * Sam Douglas as Rosebud
 * Ewen Bremner as Mullet
 * Andy Beckwith as Errol
 * Dave Legeno as John
 * William Beck as Neil
 * Sol Campbell as Bouncer at Boxing match (uncredited)

Production
Principal photography for Snatch was filmed between 18 October and 12 December 1999, in London and Buckinghamshire. A half-hour documentary of the production of the film was released featuring much of the cast along with Ritchie. Tom Delmar worked as the stunts choreographer for Snatch, and he has also choreographed stunt sequences in films such as Aliens, 102 Dalmatians and Velayudham.

Box office
Snatch was largely successful, both in critical response and financial gross, and has gone on to develop a devoted cult following. It opened in the UK on 1 September 2000 in 389 cinemas and grossed £2,637,364 in its opening weekend to become the number one film at the box office. Including preview grosses of £542,638, its opening weekend gross of £3.1 million set the record for an 18-certificate film, beating the record set earlier in the year by American Beauty. From a budget of $10 million, the film grossed £12,137,698 in the United Kingdom, $30.3 million in the United States and Canada, and a total of $83.6 million worldwide.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 74%, based on 142 reviews, with a weighted average score of 6.40/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though perhaps a case of style over substance, Guy Ritchie's second crime caper is full of snappy dialogue, dark comedy, and interesting characters." On Metacritic, the film has a score 55 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

While the film received mostly positive reviews, several reviewers commented negatively on perceived similarities in plot, character, setting, theme and style between Snatch and Ritchie's previous work, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. In his review, Roger Ebert gave the film 2 out of 4 stars, writing that while ostensibly rooted in the London underworld, Pitt's Irish traveller community were the most interesting element of the plot and the film's clearest predecessors were all American: Dick Tracy comics, Damon Runyon stories, and zany Marx Brothers comedies. He raised the question of "What am I to say of Snatch, Ritchie's new film, which follows the 'Lock, Stock' formula so slavishly it could be like a new arrangement of the same song?"

Writing in the New York Times Elvis Mitchell commented that "Mr. Ritchie seems to be stepping backward when he should be moving ahead". Some critics also argued that the film was lacking in depth and substance; many reviewers appeared to agree with Ebert's comment that "the movie is not boring, but it doesn't build and it doesn't arrive anywhere". The film has gone on to develop a cult movie following, and features within the IMDb top 250 rated films.

Soundtrack
Two versions of the soundtrack album were released, one on the Universal International label with 23 tracks.

Track listing

 * 1) "Diamond" – Klint
 * 2) "Vere Iz da Storn?" – Benicio del Toro
 * 3) "Supermoves" – Overseer
 * 4) "Hernando's Hideaway" – The Johnston Brothers
 * 5) "Zee Germans" – Jason Statham
 * 6) "Golden Brown" – The Stranglers
 * 7) "Dreadlock Holiday" – 10cc
 * 8) "Hava Nagila" – John Murphy and Daniel L. Griffiths
 * 9) "Avi Arrives" – Dennis Farina
 * 10) "Cross the Track (We Better Go Back)" – Maceo & the Macks
 * 11) "Disco Science" – Mirwais
 * 12) "Nemesis" – Alan Ford
 * 13) "Hot Pants (I'm Coming, Coming, I'm Coming)" – Bobby Byrd
 * 14) "Lucky Star" – Madonna
 * 15) "Come Again!" – Alan Ford
 * 16) "Ghost Town" – The Specials
 * 17) "Shrinking Balls" – Vinnie Jones
 * 18) "Sensual Woman" – The Herbaliser
 * 19) "Angel" – Massive Attack
 * 20) "RRRR...Rumble" – Charles Cork
 * 21) "Fuckin' in the Bushes" – Oasis
 * 22) "Avi's Declaration" – Dennis Farina
 * 23) "Don't You Just Know It" – Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns

Home media
The film has been released in multiple incarnations on DVD and other formats.

In July 2001, a two-disc "Special Edition" was released, containing both a full screen and widescreen presentation of the feature. Included was an audio commentary track with director Guy Ritchie and producer Matthew Vaughn. The special features on the second disc included a "making of" featurette, deleted scenes, original theatrical trailer and TV spots, text/photo galleries, storyboard comparisons, and filmographies.

In September 2002, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment released a "Deluxe Collection" DVD as part of the company's Superbit series. This release contained two discs, one being the special features disc of the original DVD release, and the other a superbit version of the feature. As is the case with superbit presentations, the disc was absent of the additional features included in the original standard DVD, such as the audio commentary. The disc contained subtitles in eight different languages including a "pikey" track, which only showed subtitles for the character Mickey.

In June 2003, a single disc setup was released, with new cover art, containing the feature disc of the special edition set. This version was simply a repackaging, omitting the second disc.

In July 2021, Sony Pictures released Snatch on the 4k Ultra HD format, which features an HDR transfer of the film along with the special features of the previously released Blu-Ray.

Television
In April 2016, it was announced that a television series based on Snatch was in development, with the associated studios comparing the series to how the Fargo show expanded upon the original film. Created by writer, executive producer, and showrunner Alex De Rakoff, the series is based on a true story heist for gold bullion in London, the show will be a Crackle exclusive release. In August 2016, Rupert Grint was named among the cast of the series, while serving as an executive producer. Dougray Scott, Ed Westwick, Luke Pasqualino, Lucien Laviscount, Phoebe Dynevor, and Juliet Aubrey feature in recurring roles.

The series had 20 episodes, running one hour-long each, and was named the most-viewed series for the streamer. The project was announced as a joint-venture production between Sony Pictures Television, Little Island Productions, and Sony Crackle Originals. The series debuted on 16 March 2017 and ran for two seasons.