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"Why Guy Ritche's Snatch is sooo good!"

If you want a good British gangster movie, then there is no better place to turn these days than to Guy Ritchie. The guy who became next in line to marry Madonna has created a sequel to Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in all but name, and it doesn't suffer for it either. With a bigger budget, and bigger stars too, Snatch is much more the Hollywood movie than the first, but at the same time it retains it's air of Britishness. Richie should be given a pat on the back for keeping Snatch true to its British surroundings, without selling out to the American cinema goers (with the sole exception of casting Brad Pitt, although he does do a pretty good Irish impersonation to be honest!) THE PLOT The plot is similar in style and content to Lock, Stock... but it has a certain flair of it's own and stands out as a fantastic movie. Boxing promoter Turkish gets an Irish gipsy, “One Punch” Mickey O'Neil (played by Pitt with a really funny accent that you can’t understand for the most part) to box for him after he’s beaten their best boxer up whilst buying a caravan (don’t ask!) Unfortunately, Mickey has his own ideas about boxing rules and the promoters’ start finding themselves on the wrong end of trouble. Meanwhile, a giant 86 carat diamond is stolen by thief Freddy Four Fingers, who is now trying to get to America to get rid of it, but is followed by fellow rough guy Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) in order for it to be ‘retrieved’ The sub-plot twists it’s way into the main plot and loads of dodgy thieves and criminals start getting involved in the diamond heist, all of them double crossing each other in the process. The way the film twists and turns is amazing, although the ending is pretty straightforward and easy to guess from the start, and it really drags you in to it, despite the many characters that seem to appear at an alarming rate. It is so darkly funny at times that you’ll wonder whether you should really be laughing at all, but it’s always entertaining. THE DVD On a two disc dvd, this package has a lot of extras to offer the viewer. On the first disc, apart from the film itself, is a great commentary from both Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn, it does tend to produce some ‘waffle’ in places, but it is also interesting for the most part. There are also a few deleted scenes, but to be honest, these don’t add too much to the surrounding storyline. Disc two contains the bulk of the features though, a sound clip interview collection, which seems slightly pointless when there could have been actual interviews instead, a nice ‘making of’ feature, which is pretty good and fairly interesting after watching the film, more deleted scenes and script and photoshots. There is also a nice little storyboard comparison that takes you through a few design scenes with a multiple angle option and nifty little ‘jump to a song’ option that takes you to some of the music highlights of the film. All in all, a very good set of extras. The film itself is presented in Anamorphic widescreen, which means that it has the best quality picture you’ll be able to find, and it also has a nice Dolby 5.1 soundtrack, which seems to be becoming the norm now on DVDs. So as a package, this DVD is pretty damn good. In fact, I’d recommend that you do what the title suggests and ‘snatch’ up a copy for yourself, legally of course!

Soph wrote:
> The film itself is
> presented in Anamorphic widescreen, which means that it has the best
> quality picture you’ll be able to find

A film being Anamorphic doesn't guarantee the best picture quality - that's down to how well the compression is carried out. Like for like an anamorphic transfer will give a better quality picture than a non-anamorphic one though, so you're sort of right.

If you want a good British gangster movie, then there is no better place to turn these days than to Guy Ritchie. The guy who became next in line to marry Madonna has created a sequel to Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in all but name, and it doesn't suffer for it either. With a bigger budget, and bigger stars too, Snatch is much more the Hollywood movie than the first, but at the same time it retains it's air of Britishness. Richie should be given a pat on the back for keeping Snatch true to its British surroundings, without selling out to the American cinema goers (with the sole exception of casting Brad Pitt, although he does do a pretty good Irish impersonation to be honest!) THE PLOT The plot is similar in style and content to Lock, Stock... but it has a certain flair of it's own and stands out as a fantastic movie. Boxing promoter Turkish gets an Irish gipsy, “One Punch” Mickey O'Neil (played by Pitt with a really funny accent that you can’t understand for the most part) to box for him after he’s beaten their best boxer up whilst buying a caravan (don’t ask!) Unfortunately, Mickey has his own ideas about boxing rules and the promoters’ start finding themselves on the wrong end of trouble. Meanwhile, a giant 86 carat diamond is stolen by thief Freddy Four Fingers, who is now trying to get to America to get rid of it, but is followed by fellow rough guy Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) in order for it to be ‘retrieved’ The sub-plot twists it’s way into the main plot and loads of dodgy thieves and criminals start getting involved in the diamond heist, all of them double crossing each other in the process. The way the film twists and turns is amazing, although the ending is pretty straightforward and easy to guess from the start, and it really drags you in to it, despite the many characters that seem to appear at an alarming rate. It is so darkly funny at times that you’ll wonder whether you should really be laughing at all, but it’s always entertaining. THE DVD On a two disc dvd, this package has a lot of extras to offer the viewer. On the first disc, apart from the film itself, is a great commentary from both Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn, it does tend to produce some ‘waffle’ in places, but it is also interesting for the most part. There are also a few deleted scenes, but to be honest, these don’t add too much to the surrounding storyline. Disc two contains the bulk of the features though, a sound clip interview collection, which seems slightly pointless when there could have been actual interviews instead, a nice ‘making of’ feature, which is pretty good and fairly interesting after watching the film, more deleted scenes and script and photoshots. There is also a nice little storyboard comparison that takes you through a few design scenes with a multiple angle option and nifty little ‘jump to a song’ option that takes you to some of the music highlights of the film. All in all, a very good set of extras. The film itself is presented in Anamorphic widescreen, which means that it has the best quality picture you’ll be able to find, and it also has a nice Dolby 5.1 soundtrack, which seems to be becoming the norm now on DVDs. So as a package, this DVD is pretty damn good. In fact, I’d recommend that you do what the title suggests and ‘snatch’ up a copy for yourself, legally of course!