'Snatch': A Well Oiled Machine About ... What?

Turkish (Jason Statham), Mickey O;Neil (Brad Pitt)
 and Tommy (Stephen Graham) in 'Snatch.'

The problem with "Snatch," Guy Ritchie's crime drama/comedy that looks at life through the eyes of Turkish (Jason Statham), a London promoter of unlicensed boxing matches, is that the film's not really about anything.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty that happens plot-wise. There's a frenetic chase after an impossibly large diamond. And everyone involved faces life-threatening consequences for one reason or another — there's nothing like life-threatening consequences to ratchet-up the tension.

But the movie never pauses long enough to let us catch our breath and start to care about whether or not any of the characters get bumped off. Instead, it unfolds like circus performers getting shot out of a canon. And at that speed we're not supposed to notice that the material is a bit thin.

The characters all seem drawn from the pages of the comics. There is bespectacled Brick Top (Alan Ford), the crime boss who feeds victims of his wrath to the pigs. And there's the aforementioned Turkish, as well as Mickey O'Neil (Brad Pitt), an Irish gypsy bare-knuckle boxer whose thick "Traveller" dialect is all but impenetrable.

The film's furious pace keeps you engaged, but at the end it feels like a 90-minute junk-food banquet. Here, Ritchie, for all his talents, comes across as Quentin Tarantino-lite. He gets the action right. But unlike Tarantino, whose films let us get a bit closer to the characters, Ritchie never quite lets us rest and see the gangsters and louts as a lot more than cogs in a well-oiled machine. While Tarantino's movies take on substantial themes, such as redemption and loyalty, Ritchie merely cranks up the action.

All Aboard Guy Ritchie's Quick-Cut, Malevolent Joy Ride

Normally I write here about movies and TV shows I've seen. But two Netflix discs have been sitting unwatched on my coffee table for nearly three weeks. It's been my cuckoo writing schedule that prevents me from hunkering down and watching stuff I'd like to see.

The two on-deck films are both Guy Ritchie-directed movies, "Snatch," and "RocknRolla." Opinion is divided among those I've spoken with on which is the better of the two -- some might say neither.

"Snatch"looks at, among other aspects of society, Irish "Travellers," a gypsy-like culture that exists in the U.K. and elsewhere. "RocknRolla" focuses on the pursuit of a cache of mob money that's up for grabs. That's about all I know about them.

I have my misgivings about Ritchie -- apart from that erstwhile marriage to a certain American celebrity whose name will not be mentioned here. Ritchie's trademark camera moves -- he makes the camera dodge around frozen images of a given scene at unexpected times -- usually bring the action to a halt. Computer-generated video effects have their place, but the stuff I've seen so far from this dirctor all seems filled with the requisite sound and fury, while signifying nothing.

His dialog is usually fast and funny, and he cuts his scenes with the attention-deficit-disorder crowd in mind. I can't quite decide whether I like him or find him annoying. I just may get around to watching these two flicks tonight, and maybe I'll decide then.