Plot is everything here, and nothing. There's a diamond heist and a stickup of a bookie's; unlicensed boxing matches and quite possibly the most gruesome way ever to dispose of troublesome corpses; globetrotting criminals and the quickest transatlantic trip known to mankind; disreputable gypsies and the dogs they throw into every shady deal. Wandering in and out is a stew of inglorious characters seemingly pumped from the sewers of London's East End: boxing promoter Turkish (Jason Statham), jewel thief Franky Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro: Traffic, The Pledge), enforcers Boris the Blade (Rade Serbedzija: Space Cowboys, Mission: Impossible 2) and Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones: Gone in 60 Seconds), and bare-knuckle fighter One Punch Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt: Fight Club, Meet Joe Black), a gypsy with a hilariously unintelligible pseudo-Irish accent. They're the cream of the London underworld, but henchmen are always idiots and the brains of an operation usually isn't much better.

What an ear for names Ritchie has... and what a talent for weaving together the many strands of a complicated tale and bringing them together in so satisfying and diverting a manner. Snatch is, at the risk of sounding pompous, positively Shakespearean, with its chance meetings, fatal Achilles heels, revenge served cold, and inconvenient and accidental bullets to the head. If the Bard were alive today and trying to be Quentin Tarantino, he'd come up with something like Snatch. It's a play full of fools, of course, and its sound and fury signifies nothing more than mischievous cleverness, but, man, what a ride.