Guy Ritchie, perhaps better known as “Mr. Madonna,” has unleashed a comic romp from New York City to London peopled by characters so thickheaded you wonder how they got so far in life. The movie might better be called Dumb and Dumber, but that title was already taken.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around a stolen 84-carat diamond and rigged boxing matches. All sorts of unsavory crooks—the character names above should give you some hint as to their personalities—interact in about six different story lines that require a flow chart to keep straight. But they all come together at the end of the movie in one huge gag that will likely bring an explosive roar of laughter from audiences.
Basically, Franky Four Fingers messes up an assignment to fence a stolen diamond. Boris the Blade, an ex-KGB type, gets it and loses it. Meanwhile, Turkish and Tommy get on the wrong side of the crooked boxing promoter, Brick Top, when their guy can’t make a rigged match and their substitute fighter, Mickey O’Neil, “forgets” to take a dive in the fourth. Mickey has a hilarious Gypsy accent so impenetrable that it serves as a running joke throughout the movie. Throw in a trio of buffoons—Vinny, Sol and Tyrone—and the result is perhaps the blackest of black comedies.
positive elements: Sketchy at best. Mickey O’Neil and his brothers love their mother fiercely, and she them. That’s about it, unless one scrounges for morsels of a “crime doesn’t pay” moral from the assorted goings-on.
spiritual content: A team of crooks, disguised as rabbis, discusses the story of Adam and Eve as they prepare to rob a jewelry store. They somehow get from that to a discussion of the New Testament. “It’s not every day that a virgin conceives,” one says. “Next thing you know, you’ve got the Catholic Church.” Another “rabbi” says, “Just because it’s written doesn’t make it so.” A gangster makes a very crude sexual remark about the Virgin Mary.
sexual content: One scene set in a topless bar. (Interestingly, Madonna’s song “Lucky Star” is playing on the jukebox.) Two gangsters use playing cards adorned with nude females. Vulgar sexual jokes are traded.
violent content: Most of Snatch involves violence. A clerk is pistol-whipped during a robbery. Another gets his teeth knocked out by a sledge hammer. Brick Top is known for feeding the dismembered bodies of his victims to pigs, and he describes in detail how to do it. A man is shot through the head. His arm, which is handcuffed to a brief case, is hacked off with a meat cleaver. Another man is shot through the head with little left to the imagination as to what happens to his brains. Robbers blow a hole in a wall with a shotgun. A man is strangled in a car window. A man is run over by a car. In a violent barroom shootout, one man refuses to die (much to the annoyance of a hit man, who keeps pumping bullets into him). A man accidentally kills himself with a sword. There are also many scenes of violent, bare-knuckle boxing. And the list goes on and on.
crude or profane language: The f-word is used anywhere between 100 and 150 times. That said, it should be assumed that many other vulgarities and profanities flow freely. The Lord’s name is also taken in vain.
drug and alcohol content: Mickey is a smoker, often leaving his cigarette hanging from his lips as he boxes. Numerous characters down beer and hard liquor. Gypsies get extremely drunk during a funeral wake.
other negative elements: There are no good guys in this movie, so there’s no one to identify with or root for. What it is stocked with are bad and less bad guys.
conclusion: What if Ritchie, an obviously talented director, had turned his comedic talents to a similar story but without such graphic violence or crude language? What if said similar story actually had a moral at the end? What if the moon were made of cheese? What ifs just don’t cut it—Snatch is not such a story.
