Parallel Action - Cross-cutting

Another technique that Guy Ritchie uses is cross-cutting, which shows parallel action. One of the best known scenes in which he uses this technique is in his film Snatch. He compares Turkish and Tommy to Tyrone by presenting parallel action, cutting back and forth between the rabbit eluding a pair of hounds and Tyrone eluding a pair of Brick Top’s thugs. While the rabbit escapes, Tyrone is not so lucky. Because Turkish bet that the rabbit would lose its life, he and Tommy owe Mickey in addition to Brick Top. The technique of cross-cutting adds to the suspense of the situations and makes the audience wonder what the outcome of both these situations will be. It also shows the audience how thin the line is between animal and human behaviour. Also in the film Snatch, as three sets of interests converge on their common objective, we see a violently fatal car crash three times, as though we can see all points of view not in parallel, but sequentially. Guy Ritchie knows that the audience know what to expect from parallel action. Thus, he plays with the audience's expectations and manipulates it. As the three cars approach a similar destination, classical parallel action is not used so that it is not just showing what is happening in one spot and mean while what is happening in another spot. Instead one set of characters goes forward to a certain point in time and space, and then the edit jumps back to an earlier time and shows another set of characters on their journey to meet no just in space, but in time. This manipulation makes the audience feel like God. It doesn't just show information the characters wouldn't know about things going on, but also reveals information that the characters could not know about their own actions. This style of parallel action takes the audience outside the story so that they do not feel with any of the characters, instead the audience feels clever, omniscient, just as the director might feel because he, like God, knows more about the story than any of his characters could.

Snatch - Parallel Action (2:30)

Snatch - Parallel Action

In RocknRolla, parallel action is presented in the scene where Johnny is attacking the bouncer of a nightclub. This scene is alternated with the scene of the band playing in the nightclub. The music that the band is playing highly contributes to escalate the violence of the scene, and cutting back and forth between these scenes also makes the audience feel like the situations are more chaotic and violent than it actually is. Another scene where cross-cutting is used to present parallel action is when One-Two, Mumbles and Handsome Bob split up to run away from either Russian thugs or policemen. This technique allows the audience to follow the actions of all 3 of these characters, so that they don't miss out on any of the action. As this scene is also a flashback, the audience already know that the characters were successful in escaping. Therefore, this technique of parallel action again allows the audience to feel like God, clever and omniscient.

RocknRolla - Club Fight Scene

RocknRolla - Chase Sequence