Snatch Review

Roger Ebert said it followed the Lock, Stock formula so slavishly it could be a new arrangement of the same song, and that is fair: the crosscut strands, the freeze-frame introductions, the comic violence and several of the cast all return. What it adds is star power used well. Brad Pitt's Mickey, a bare-knuckle boxer from a Traveller camp whose accent defeats everyone on screen, is a genuinely funny comic creation, and the DVD carried a subtitle track just for him. Alan Ford's Brick Top, who explains what pigs can do to a body with the calm of an accountant, is one of the great British screen gangsters.

Jason Statham anchors it as the harried promoter Turkish, Benicio del Toro and Dennis Farina drift through as the diamond changes hands, and Vinnie Jones does a heavier version of his Lock, Stock act. The plotting is busier than before and less satisfying, because the coincidences now feel shuffled rather than engineered, and Ebert's other complaint holds: it does not build, it simply keeps going. Quotable, fast, entertaining, and a step sideways.