Movie Review: The Gentlemen

The Gentlemen *** / *****

Directed by: Guy Ritchie.

Written by: Guy Ritchie and Ivan Atkinson & Marn Davies.

Starring: Matthew McConaughey (Mickey Pearson), Charlie Hunnam (Raymond), Michelle Dockery (Rosalind), Jeremy Strong (Cannabis Kingpin Mathew), Colin Farrell (Coach), Henry Golding (Dry Eye), Hugh Grant (Fletcher), Jason Wong (Phuc), Christopher Evangelou (Primetime), Eliot Sumner (Laura Pressfield).

 

Guy Ritchie’s two best films remain his first two – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch – which were (rightly) considered at the time as among the better of the main Quentin Tarantino clones that came out in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Neither film was great – but they captured they had energy, were entertaining, and had some great performances in them. In the many years since, Ritchie has often maintained that kind of hyper-stylization, but he has applied them studio tent poles like Sherlock Holmes or would-be tent poles like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (a film I like more in retrospect than I did at the time) – although in films like last year’s Aladdin, he pretty much had to mute all of that to appease Disney. His latest film, The Gentlemen, is being marketed as a return to that kind of filmmaking – and so it is – yet I could help but think as I watched the film that it felt more like a clone of those earlier films, which were as mentioned, a clone of Tarantino films – so what we have here is a clone of a clone, and while the result is entertaining for the most part, I’m not quite sure I see the point of it.

 

The Gentlemen has an interesting structure – with P.I. Fletcher (Hugh Grant, clearly having almost as much as he did in Paddington 2) telling a story to Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) in the hopes that Raymond can convince his boss, Mickey (Matthew McConaughey) to pay him a lot of money to stop him from taking the story to the papers. It’s the story of how Mickey became the biggest pot dealer in England, and how he’s trying to cash out now by selling his business to Matthew (Jeremy Strong), while fending off a takeover bid by Dry Eye (Henry Goldin). Twists and turns abound – involving all sorts of unsavory characters – including Coach (a scene stealing Colin Farrell), and the young men he trains at boxing. Lots of death, lots of drug, lots of swearing follow.

 

I found it hard to care too much about anything that happens in the movie – these are all objectively awful people, and perhaps even worse, there’s no one here – aside from Farrell – who you really root for in spite of that. Any outcome then – no matters how lives, who dies, who wins, who loses, doesn’t really matter. Still, it’s all wrapped up in an entertaining package. Ritchie’s writing still plays like someone trying to imitate Tarantino from 25 years ago, with some British slang thrown in – but he’s got such a talented cast, that they’re able to deliver it all in a way that works. Farrell and Grant are the best at this – although McConaughey is having fun here as well. Hunnam is his usual stereotypical dull character – but Ritchie leans into that a little, by making Raymond so calm throughout that the fact that he’s a little boring doesn’t really hurt him. It’s clear for someone like Michelle Dockery, of Downton Abbey fame, her role here is an attempt to complicate the image people have of her – with mixed results, and for Henry Golding, it’s perhaps to play someone who isn’t so damn perfect. I’m not quite sure what the hell Jeremy Strong, so great on Succession, is doing here but I almost suspect it’s something like Benicio Del Toro in The Usual Suspects, who found the character so dull as written, that he did something to amuse himself, and it worked.

 

There’s not much more to The Gentlemen than that. It’s pretty much a Guy Ritchie reboot of those old films, so if you’re nostalgic for them, then boy is this the movie you. It’s got the same style, the same writing, the same energy as those earlier films – and if no one quite reaches the heights of Brad Pitt in Snatch, well, at least it’s not for a lack of trying. The film does have perhaps a little too much of a studio sheen to it – something Lock, Stock and Snatch didn’t really have – but I suppose you cannot spend as long as Ritchie has churning out intellectual property content without some of it rubbing off on you. The Gentlemen is a fun diversion then at best – a reminder of why Ritchie was seen as a very promising director 20 years ago when burst onto the scene, but also further proof that he hasn’t really advanced since then.