Snatch

Unlicensed boxing, Guy Ritchie style

Snatch is not a boxing film in the Rocky sense: the ring is a backdrop and an engine for a gangster comedy. Two worlds meet. On one side, unlicensed bouts staged in warehouses, with bookmakers, bets and orders to go down in a given round. On the other, the bare-knuckle boxing of the Travellers, practised for generations in Irish Traveller communities, where Mickey O'Neil settles matters with a single punch. Ritchie shoots every knockout in wide angle and slow motion with sharp cutting, for shock and laughs rather than plausibility. A boxer will learn nothing about technique here: in Snatch one hook is always enough. What rings true is the atmosphere of basement fight nights and the weight of money riding on the result.

A real boxer in the final fight

Mickey's opponent in the last bout, Horace Good Night Anderson, is played by Scott Welch, a British professional heavyweight and former British and Commonwealth champion. Vinnie Jones, the ex-Wimbledon footballer with a reputation for hard tackling, plays bounty hunter Bullet Tooth Tony. Tom Delmar choreographed the stunts. Brad Pitt, a fan of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, had asked to work with Ritchie; unable to hold a London accent, he gave Mickey a near-unintelligible Traveller patter that became the character's trademark.

Statham before the action films

Jason Statham, a former diver for England, plays Turkish, the narrator. It is his second film with Ritchie after Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and the one that got him noticed abroad. Two years later The Transporter launched a career built entirely on fight choreography drawn from kickboxing and martial arts. In Snatch he does not fight: he takes the blows of fate and comments on them.

Reception

Shot from October to December 1999 in London and Buckinghamshire on a 10 million dollar budget, Snatch grossed 83.6 million worldwide. In the UK its opening weekend (3.1 million pounds) set a record for an 18-certificate film. Critics were split: 74% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, 55 out of 100 on Metacritic, and Roger Ebert complained that it replayed Lock, Stock note for note. Audiences turned it into a cult film, quoted for its lines, its soundtrack (The Stranglers, Massive Attack, Oasis) and Mickey's final fight.