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What was originally perceived as a cover song of his previous "Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels," Writer/Director Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" opened to a mildly receptive audience. Pretty much, everyone felt that they had already heard this song already--just played before with different instruments: an ensemble of criminal and social misfits, all connected through an accidentally complex tapestry of fate, fuck-ups and possible divine intervention.  Almost ten years later, it's hard to run into a film lover who doesn't have this DVD laying on their coffee table as the stay-in-for-the-night-entertainment everyone can agree on.

The scene: Skipping ahead of its colorful opening segments, in which we're introduced to a character actor roster only the cinema gods can grant (including the untouchable Dennis Farina--watch out for his cross-section spew out on what "London" is), this particular scene has Stephen Graham (most recently Baby Face Nelson in Mann's "Public Enemies") in a shady cash purchase of a Caravan from a band of Gypsies.  Aided by the physical presence of the large Gorgeous George (an underground boxer he co-manages), Graham's Tommy character tries to comprehend the jibber-jabber-dialect of Mickey O'Neill (Brad Pitt, in an against-type supporting turn) who seems to be the alpha Gypsy of the clan (although here the term "Pikey" sometimes gets tossed around in place of Gypsy).  When Mickey and his buddies sell Tommy and Gorgeous George a defective Caravan, the pair of groups decide to settle the matter in a bare knuckle boxing match between Mickey and the gargantuan Gorgeous George (Adam Fogerty).  Of course, things go exactly wrong during the fight, as Mickey turns out to be a bare knuckle boxing champion and unbelievably knocks out Gorgeous George.  Plus, this impressive sequence ends with The Strangler's "Golden Brown" song rising on the film's soundtrack.

Why we love it: Watching the film on DVD now, gives us a sort of revived appreciation for Ritchie's unsung caper (and I'll admit it now, it's sort of a modest masterpiece in the lurid place of crime films) so there are really countless "great" scenes.  If we take the context of this scene into thought, we know that Gorgeous George is only days away from an important rigged fight for the notorious crime lord Brick Top (one of the great crime figures in film history, yes I said it) so the fact that he will essentially be bed ridden leaves Tommy (and his partner played by Jason Statham) in a really fucked situation.  The added dilemma of Tommy actually being killed by the angry Pikeys on the spot doesn't really help either.  If anything, the scene is a microcosm of the entire film in general: What always begins as a simple transaction slyly turns into a proposition and then ends fatal.  If anything, "Snatch" is Ritchie's term paper on the crime genre turned on its head.  In American crime films, theses murderistic figures are usually glorified to an almost untouchable status, leaving us longing to secretly live a life of crime.  With "Snatch" [and also "Lock, Stock" as well as the recent "RocknRolla"] Ritchie chooses to embody the cinematic criminal as an outsider who yearns to be accepted through an unpopular channel (the breaking the law one) and constantly has other independent agents of the same nature crashing into one other.  What we then see is a herd of lost souls all looking to piss on each other in order to, well, in a sense, get a better Caravan.

Watch how "Golden Brown" wraps up this scene here.