Snatch makes for boring time

A convoluted story combined with haphazard directing make for a poor evening of entertainment in the new film Snatch. This is a tale about an 86 karat diamond and all the people who become entangled with it within the British mobster scene. The film follows Frankie Four Fingers (Benicio Del Toro) as he loses the diamond that he is supposed to deliver to Avi (Dennis Farina). Avi then hires out Bullet Tooth Tony (Vinnie Jones) to help him track it down. Along the way, Avi runs into ex-KGB spy Boris the Blade (Rade Sherbedgia), who in turn has dealings with two small timers named Tommy and Turkish. These two have some shady dealings with an underground boxing promoter named Brick Top. Their dealings with Brick Top lead them to enlist the aide of a bare-fisted gypsy boxer named Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt). The film was written and directed by Guy Ritchie, who was recently wed to Madonna. The story of Snatch itself isn't a bad one, it's just that it is told badly on the screen. The film is very reminiscent of early Quentin Tarantino works like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. It's very obvious that Ritchie was heavily influenced by the style of storytelling and direction found in these two films, except that it worked for Tarantino but fails miserably for Ritchie. The dialogue in the movie never breaks away from the feeling of a Tarantino film. It only sounds a little different because it utilizes regional expressions from the British Isles. Some of the lines are well worded and express the deep-seeded cynicism of the film's characters, but on the whole cannot keep the audience's attention throughout the film. The characters are poorly developed and provide only a little humor, as they were obviously intended to do. Snatch does contain some decent performances by Farina and Del Toro, but they are nothing to write home about. All in all Snatch may send a few chuckles through an otherwise bored audience, but is hardly worth the price of a ticket. Rating: D-