By Paul Tatara
CNN.com Reviewer
(CNN) -- At this stage of the game, British director Guy Ritchie may be best known outside of his own country as Mr. Madonna Ciccone. After all, his recent marriage to Little Miss Reinvention was covered with the kind of media zeal that's usually reserved for fierce military coups or the aftermath of collapsed dams.
Unfortunately, Ritchie's latest movie, an occasionally witty bloodletting merry-go-round called "Snatch," won't erase the memory of his wedlock-driven route to notoriety.
Between this picture and 1998's "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," Ritchie seems intent on beating his identity into our heads with the butt end of a pistol. There's no denying that he's technically proficient, in a histrionic, video-director sort of way, and some of his profanity-drenched dialogue is pretty funny. But he suffers from an acute case of the Quirky Tarantinos, a disease that causes otherwise intelligent filmmakers to string together barbarous acts while winking over the painfully hip irony of it all.
Quentin Tarantino, the Typhoid Mary of this affliction, should demand royalty checks from half the world's self-consciously groovy young directors. Why these guys think splattered brains and smoking bullet holes are so hilarious is anybody's guess, although prolonged adolescence surely has something to do with it.
Dumb crooks
"Snatch" (note the snicker-inducing title, kiddies) centers around a botched British jewel heist and several bare-knuckle boxing matches, mostly because both activities, when handled properly, produce copious amounts of blood. Benicio Del Toro plays Franky Four Fingers, a dim-witted thief who loses a newly stolen diamond before he can deliver it to Avi (Dennis Farina), his tough-guy boss in New York City.
While in England, Frankie, an addicted gambler, is encouraged by a fellow mobster to lay some money on an upcoming bare-knuckle match. But look out. Three bumbling pawn shop owners, Vinny (Robbie Gee), Sol (Lennie James) and Tyrone (played by Ade, one name only), are prepared to rob Frankie when he places his bet. Frankie is one of the movie's first "humorously" dead characters, in case you're wondering.
Oops! A knockout!
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Meanwhile, two unlicensed boxing promoters, Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy (Stephen Graham), are hoping to enter the big time by fixing a match for a fellow promoter named Brick Top (Alan Ford). Brick Top has a violent temper, and he proves it by cutting up adversaries and feeding them to the pigs on his hog farm. (At one point, he delivers a lengthy monologue on the nauseating details of this activity.)
Brick Top is not to be trifled with, but Turkish and Tommy inadvertently do just that, when Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt, in a boisterous supporting turn), the half-crazy Irish gypsy boxer they hire to throw the match, knocks his opponent out with a single punch.
From there on out, the plot devolves into a series of ghastly killings, torture sessions, double-crosses, robberies, and har-dee-har-har displays of painful retribution. The pigs, needless to say, do not go hungry.
Ritchie camouflages the inherent emptiness of this exercise with enough stylistic flippancies to choke a film school. You get freeze frames, fancy graphics, slowed-down footage, sped-up footage, split-second flashbacks, sly narration, and Cuisinart-style editing interludes. The idea that a director should serve his story, instead of the other way around, is anathema to this type of filmmaker. They're far more interested in having the material bow down to them.
Directing excesses
In the world of popular music, you get accomplished vocalists who masticate every note as if songs are little more than routes to displaying their own tasteless mega-proficiency. The filmmaking equivalent is footage that serves no purpose beyond repeatedly advertising an agitated presence behind the camera. There's no chance for audiences to invest any emotion when the director thinks boldly portrayed nihilism is the only activity that's worth observing.
That said, there are pleasures to be had in "Snatch." Its abrasive look -- although definitely not its busy construction -- is reminiscent of classic cops-and-robbers pictures from the 1970s. Cinematographer Tim Maurice-Jones lays the grit right on the surface. His feet-planted realism occasionally remedies Ritchie's near-continuous showboating. Hugo Luczyc-Wyhowski's production design is also evocative without attacking you. It's amazing that Ritchie allows such subtlety in his co-workers.
The cast is ferociously focused, not that it makes their thick-headed intimidation any less wearying. Statham and Graham are especially amusing as the quibbling fight promoters, and Ford is a bizarrely withdrawn psychopath.
But Pitt's greasy performance as Mickey is a genuine highlight; he obviously relishes not having to carry the entire movie on his superstar shoulders. Mickey speaks in a slurred brogue that can only be properly understood by his gypsy cohorts. He invariably sounds like he's trying to dislodge a three-ounce wad of gum from his molars. Apparently, Irish gypsies have no concept of punctuation. Every one of Pitt's proclamations seems to be constructed out of 17 uninterrupted syllables, only two or three of which are recognizable as English.
It's a kick just trying to figure out what he's saying, beyond a staccato series of entertainingly needless f-words. An Oscar nomination (but surely not a win) might be in order.
Too bad it's all wasted on such an empty movie. You get the feeling that Ritchie could make an intense, seriously effective crime film if he'd just write some thoughtful material and treat it with respect.
Maybe he'll get it right next time, if he manages to grow up in the interim. Marriage has a tendency to do that to you ... even, one would assume, marriage to the most famous woman on earth.
"Snatch," as already stated, is profane and very, very violent. There's also a bit of nudity. Wait for the video, and you'll have yourself about 40 minutes of true amusement. Rated R. 113 minutes.
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