Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
So the other day John Robie and I pick up Harry and we head down to Sony where I’ve set up a screening of this film and we get there and we’re on the steps of the Thalberg and we run into McG and we start doing this sort of "Thanks" "Good Luck" dance and then we headed inside and went to the basement where we saw the film and man the film is just amazing it’s just packed with stuff like Brick Top and Boris the Butcher and the squeak toy dog and the replica guns and Dennis Farina and that last amazing boxing match and did I mention I love the squeak toy dog like I can't even tell you how much and gypsy scams and trans-Atlantic flights and that kickass bass line under the closing credits and Vinnie motherfucking Jones and after the screening we came bouncing out of the Thalberg just hooting about the film and we ran into some people and did some things on the lot I can’t quite tell you about but the whole time all we could do was babble about the film like we were drunk and...
Whoa. Jeez. Pardon me. I can’t help myself. That’s just the effect this exuberant new confection has on me every time I think about it. Guy Ritchie’s delirious new crime drama feels like this ecstatic rush of images and hilarious dialogue and ideas, all of it delivered with confidence by one of the wittiest new stylists in film, a Richard Lester for the 21st century.
I saw LOCK, STOCK & TWO SMOKING BARRELS several times in the theater, taking friends back with me to show it to them. I was struck by that film’s energy, by the playful way it worked to reinvigorate a genre I was getting deadly tired of. I thought the cast was wonderful, fresh and funny faces that all seemed to get it, that all seemed tuned in to that same particular sensibility. To me, that film seemed like raw promise. Ritchie has fulfilled that promise and then some with his sophomore film. There’s an impressive command to the way he put this film together. He seems to have learned by almost quantum leaps from that first experience. In every way, SNATCH feels like an improvement over that first film, an expansion upon all the good ideas we saw there, with numerous invaluable additions to the palette Richie is using.
The word "clever" has somehow become a negative thing when most reviewers use it, but I mean it as high praise. Ritchie is a damn clever filmmaker. Ritchie in person projects a regular guy vibe, confidence without ego, and his film projects those same qualities. The title sequence is slick and communciates volumes and builds tension beautifully, and as soon as it ends, we’re off and running. Like RUN LOLA RUN or THE ROAD WARRIOR or PULP FICTION, this is a shot of cinemadrenaline direct to the pleasure center, a piece of entertainment that is art simply by how well it’s crafted.
I’m not even going to begin to spoil the film’s many charms for you this far out. We’re not looking at a US release for the film until after the New Year, although Sony would be smart to open it for a qualifying run in NY and LA sometime in December. Brad Pitt’s work here is strong enough to earn him a nomination. Mickey O'Neill is both uproariously funny and surprisingly touching. He manages to use some of the same swagger as Tyler Durden here without any of the menace. Mickey may be a ferocious bare knuckle boxer, but he’s also a mama’s boy, and that balance is what makes the character an original.
In fact, all these characters are originals. Vinnie Jones does a great job as Bullet Tooth Tony, Alan Ford is the very model of venal menace as Brick Top, Jason Statham and Stephen Graham make a sympathetic central duo as Turkish and Tommy, and Andy Beckwith, Rade Serbedzija, Benecio Del Toro, Dennis Farina, and Ade all hold their own places in delirious orbit around everyone else. I don’t think Ritchie’s films feel like they’re meant to be real. Instead, he’s taken his obviously extensive knowledge of London’s shady side and he’s turned it into something that is as unique and as much his as the worlds of Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, or Quentin Tarantino. They’re all writers in the same basic genre, but it’s the flavor they each bring to things that makes them memorable and vital as artists. Ritchie joins their ranks easily with this film, and I hope that after he takes some time away from this genre (his next one looks to be a period film), he comes back and continues to texture in this fascinating portrait he’s begun painting.
The soundtrack to the film is packed with amazing music, but very little of it is new. Instead, it’s been chosen for effect with a keen ear, something that I always find impressive. When a studio and its record label arm forces a soundtrack on a film, it’s obvious. Even if there’s a few good songs in the mix, it’s the label sampler quality to things that ruins modern films. With SNATCH, there’s wit at work in every department, including this one, and when something like Massive Attack’s "Angel" is used, it packs a punch (all puns intended). I hope there are plans to release this early, as I’d love to get a copy of it immediately. It’s just another way Sony could help get the buzz started on the film, too, and I have a feeling they’re going to need all the help they can get.
It’s not that SNATCH is a hard film to market. Robie and Harry and I talked about this extensively after we watched the film. It’s really not difficult. It’s just that it will require a confident hand, and it will require some original handling by the studio. They need to send Ritchie and his film to colleges to speak directly to audiences, or to send the cast when Ritchie can’t attend. This is a cast that audiences are going to fall in love with. Who wouldn’t want to meet Tyrone right after the film ends? Who wouldn’t be terrified if Brick Top walked out? Let college audiences see the film and let them find it without an obnoxious hype campaign that tells them how "hip" the film is. It’s astonishingly hip, but in the real sense of the word, not the prepackaged one. It’s hip because it works so very well, not because a giant ad campaign says it is.
The title isn’t an issue. Sony released a film called DICK last year, so they can certainly release one called SNATCH this year. It’s a heist film. Yes, it’s a double entendre, but that’s a good thing. Ritchie’s a provocateur with enough sense to know that he’s got to make a film that justifies the title, and he does. If there’s controversy, then good. People will be talking about the film, and that’s exactly what the studio should want to have happen. The people who are too offended by the title to show up at the theater weren’t going to have a good time, anyway. Trust me on this one. If you’re so painfully tightassed that you don’t get a smile out of an ad campaign that promises SNATCH is "opening wide this spring", then there’s probably bigger things for you to worry about than this heist picture’s easily justified moniker.
Anyway... I don’t expect that this will be my definitive review of SNATCH. I actually want to see it again closer to release and write about it then, when I won’t feel like someone who’s giving away your Christmas presents to you in June. That's when I'll rave about the sumptuous photography by Tim Maurice-Jones and the whiplash editing by Jon Harris and Les Healey. Until then, just know that you’re in for a treat whether you live in the UK, where it’s already open and doing kick-ass business, or whether you’re like me, stuck in the States, where we could have used this film during this long, dry summer just past. No use crying over spilt milk. SNATCH is just around the corner, and it’s everything you could want from this type of movie, more fun than I could have ever expected. If this is an indicator of the kind of talent Ritchie and his producer Matthew Vaughn have to offer us in their future ventures, then we’re in for a whole string of treats to come.
"Moriarty" out.
