Guy Ritchie

A jewel thief named Franky Four Fingers steals a massive diamond, only to end up dead when he attempts to take a detour to satisfy his gambling addiction. The stories of multiple characters intertwine before the diamond finally ends up in someone's hands: there's Turkish, a boxing promoter, and his pal Tommy; an Irish gypsy named Mickey; a couple small-time crooks accompanied by their getaway driver and a dog; and more, all of them with their own goals and motivations.

I bought this years after first seeing it, based on vague memories of it having great energy and fun-but-violent heist story vibes. Either my tastes have changed, or my memories weren't very accurate, because, while it wasn't bad, it wasn't as good as I remembered.

It was also a lot more confusing than I recalled, not so much because of the diamond but because I couldn't always keep track of who knew what and how and whether characters knew each other. My vague memories of my initial viewing told me that Jason Statham's character, Turkish, was the main character, but in reality, although Turkish did the movie's narration, this didn't really have a "main" character.

The first thing I thought of while watching the opening credits was the anime TV series Baccano! - if that show's overall feel wasn't inspired by Snatch, it was at least in a similar realm. Which makes me wonder how I'd feel if I rewatched Baccano! now. Although maybe the issue is Snatch's humor - while some parts worked for me, it got a little too dark at one point (Mickey's storyline). Plus, I'm not as tolerant of certain animal-related humor anymore - I had completely forgotten the whole "dog and squeaky toy" thing (FYI, somehow, despite everything, the dog ends up fine). And the rabbit-hunting scene worked really well in context but seemed like it would be difficult to do without harming an actual rabbit (some googling just now tells me that, uh, I'm unfortunately right about that).

One thing I know for sure didn't even occur to me when I first watched this movie: I wonder how offensive Brad Pitt's scenes were? Because I'm pretty sure the first time around I was just amazed at his accent (which seemed impressively done, although, granted, I have nothing to judge it by).

Overall, this was okay, but not the level of fun I remembered it being.

Extras:

Huh, I just noticed that the subtitles available are "English, French, Pikey." Anyway, my edition had a director and producer commentary, production notes, and "Stealing Stones - enhanced branching mode." The only extra I tried was the enhanced branching mode, which apparently is supposed to show scenes in an order that makes it easier to track the diamond. I didn't get far enough in to see whether that was the case, because I wasn't in the mood to watch the whole movie again just for that.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (mere)

There haven't been many movies lately in the theaters we've wanted to see. But between now and Christmas there are a few we want to see but probably won't have time. We kicked off the holiday movie season with the new Sherlock Holmes movie. We all liked the first movie in the series and the trailers for this release looked pretty good.

It is not a real great movie but if you liked first one, you'll most likely like this one. The story is confusing, at best, and not very original. I really didn't like Downey's portrayal of Holmes in the first movie and don't much care for it here either. If you haven't seen the first movie, the opening scene will be meaningless. If you didn't see the first movie, or didn't like the first movie, I'd stay away from this.

There are some good set action pieces, although I'm a bit tired of the slow-mo in these scenes. The scenes where Holmes plays the outcome of his actions in his head were even more confusing than in the first movie.

If they make a third movie they should feature quite a bit more of Dr. Watson's (Jude Law) new wife (Kelly Reilly). She was engaging in what little they gave her to do. She was apparently in the first movie but I don't remember her.

The end of the movie takes place in an improbable castle built on the side of an improbably mountain with an improbable waterfall gushing out of it. If you've read the Sherlock Holmes stories, you can guess what's going to happen as soon as you see the waterfall.… (mere)