All Critics (144)
|
Top Critics (35)
|
Fresh (105)
|
Rotten (40)
|
DVD (36)
Ritchie may be skilled at generating controlled chaos, but his surprise-a-minute strategy ultimately holds no surprises.
This may be one of the hazardous offshoots of the music-video-trained generation of moviemakers; they confuse a diet of eye candy with a full meal.
Bouncing around in a world of bare-knuckle boxing, gypsy swindlers, pretend Jewish diamond merchants, indestructible Russian assassins and a thug who disposes of bodies by feeding them to hungry pigs, Snatch has enough plots for a fair-sized cemetery.
He's not breaking new ground with Snatch, merely fine-tuning the knack for disreputable kicks he showed in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
The cinematic dazzle, the high pitch to which he leads his actors, the relish of sheer velocity are reward enough.
Ritche has nothing but fun with this movie and we get the feeling that the actors do the same.
Eccentric characters, lively banter, adults only.
Of the ensemble, only Pitt truly shows his class, delivering an amusing yet emotive performance amongst a group of actors who -- at best -- are pandering to laddish culture.
It's a twisting, witty, and wise crime-boxing story about the hunt for a huge diamond and a prizefighter who can't take a fall.
Ritchie's two lockstep debut movies [are] exceedingly, willfully flamboyant exercises in masturbatory style.
Ritchie's follow-up to Lock, Stock is an even more craftily concocted underworld entertainment, helped no end by the casting of Pitt as the bare-knuckle boxer Mickey.
...an ideal follow-up to writer/director Guy Ritchie's debut effort, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Snatch is a full-throttle comedic crime caper that more than resembles Lock, Stock... yet remains a rollicking good time in its own right.
Madonna's husband is a dervish in the editing room, and he's not ashamed to have nicked most of the conventions of American noir.
Fortunately, the drop in entertainment value from one Ritchie film to the next isn't as steep as the drop in originality.
It's rather like the favorite pastime of this movie's villain ... throwing wild dogs into a pit and watching them fight until there's only one left standing.
This is a swift, sharp picture that pleases the senses on all levels, ranging from the visual to the aural, the linguistic, and yes even the intellectual.
Own [this single-disc edition]. Unless you already have the two-disc.
There's just not a lot of fun to be had here. The plot is too convoluted, too filled with double-reversals and twists for us to turn our brains off, relax and watch Guy Ritchie's kinetic visual style.
Snatch, while somewhat hard to follow, represents a fascinating study in character interaction and complex plot development.
More Critic Reviews
Top Critic
