The most obvious things that the two films have in common are a convoluted, difficult to understand plot, and lots of wonderful East London accents and dialects. Of course, that's wonderful for me because I'm from London, but if you're not, you might have to rely on the Finnish subtitles in a few places. The dialogue is brilliant, and had me laughing out loud a lot of the time. What struck me while watching both films, was the fact that although they are set mainly in London, it's not the London I know. It's a dark, scary place, full of very sad, evil people who like to make money out of the misery of others. Come to think of it, that does sound like London, actually. The point I'm trying to make is that you would not want to meet any of the characters in Snatch unless you were just like them — evil and stupid.
The story is about some very colourful characters who are involved in some kind of illegal boxing scam. The characters have names like 'Franky Four Fingers', 'Bullet Tooth Tony', 'Boris The Blade', 'Doug The Head' and 'Horace 'Good night' Anderson'. The lead character is a bloke called 'Turkish'. When he decides he needs a cheap caravan, he meets a gypsy called Mickey O'Neil, strangely played by Brad Pitt. Mickey has such a weird accent that no one in the film can understand what he's saying. Funnily enough, I was able to understand quite a lot, but I'm probably in the minority.
The plot is made out of several twisting subplots, one of which is a hilarious attempt to rob a betting shop. Why it's hilarious I'll leave you to find out, but suffice it to say that if you pointed a gun that big at me, I'd be liable to say something very different to what the girl behind the glass says to the robber.
I should imagine that Snatch will be as big a hit in Britain as Lock was, although it's not quite as good. There's something very natural about these films, and even though they're really just overblown comedies, they fill me with a sense of something that I just can't describe; perhaps it's the realism of the language, or the ridiculous scenarios that even ordinary people sometimes find themselves in. Or perhaps I'm just homesick. No, that's not it, I wouldn't want to have the lives of these characters, no matter how much money they have.
Finally, a few things that make Snatch really great; the long opening sequence of a row of security monitors, the squeaky pig, the girl in the betting shop, the incredible evil of the main bad guy, and of course, the gypsies' revenge.