Snatch

Snatch was Guy Ritchie's second feature, made hot on the heels of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), and consolidated the brisk, multi-strand London-criminal style that became his commercial signature for the next twenty-five years. Sony's Columbia/SKA stepped in for the production after the success of the debut, with a budget approximately five times larger than Lock, Stock's.

The cast lifted Ritchie's Vinnie Jones, Jason Statham and Stephen Graham from the previous film and added Brad Pitt, Benicio del Toro, Dennis Farina, Alan Ford and Mike Reid, Pitt's casting in particular, complete with his deliberately unintelligible Irish Traveller accent, became one of the central running jokes of the film's reception. The cinematography is by Tim Maurice-Jones, Ritchie's regular collaborator, and the score is by John Murphy and Klaus Badelt, with the now-famous use of Massive Attack, Madonna, The Stranglers and Oasis on the soundtrack.

The film grossed over $80 million worldwide on a budget of around $10 million and became the foundation of Statham's Hollywood career, he would move directly from Snatch into The One, Cellular and The Transporter within four years. Together with Lock, Stock, the film also established a particular British-criminal style (fast cuts, freeze-frame chyron introductions, multi-strand plotting) that has been imitated to the point of cliché in the quarter-century since its release.