The Gentlemen (2019)

Directed by: Guy Ritchie | 113 minutes | action, crime | Actors: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Lyne Renee, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding, Tom Wu, Chidi Ajufo, Hugh Grant, Simon R. Barker, Eddie Marsan, Jason Wong, John Dagleish, Jordan Long, Lily Frazer, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Samuel West, Geraldine Somerville, Eliot Sumner, Franz Drameh, Christopher Evangelou, James Warren

Long before Guy Ritchie became known as ‘the husband of’, he established himself as the director of ‘cockney crime capers’ such as ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ (1998) and ‘Snatch’ (2000). With his colorful mix of magnified characters, lightning-fast editing, black humor and hilariously complex crime stories that were also told from different perspectives, the filmmaker helped to bring a breath of fresh air through the British film industry. Ritchie noticed that things can go wrong in 2002, when his romantic comedy ‘Swept Away’ (2002), starring his then-wife Madonna in the lead role, was slammed by both the press and the public and was awarded no fewer than five ‘Razzies’, including those for worst movie, worst director and worst actress. Successors ‘Revolver’ (2005) and ‘RocknRolla’ (2008) didn’t do so well either. But Ritchie was not deterred and his contemporary take on the time-honoured and quintessentially British sleuth ‘Sherlock Holmes’, with Robert Downey Jr. in the title role and Jude Law as his faithful companion Dr. Watson, arranged for rehabilitation. The films that followed, including the reboot of ‘The Man from UNCLE’ (2015), ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ (2016) and the live action version of ‘Aladdin’ (2019) – projects with huge budgets and so many stakes – met with mixed reviews and didn’t deliver the success Ritchie had hoped for. ‘Maybe I should go back to the old familiar recipe of British gangster comedy’, he might have thought. ‘The Gentlemen’ is indeed Ritchie as we know him from twenty years ago. Has the British filmmaker reinvented himself? Unfortunately not, because ‘The Gentlemen’ lacks something fresh and new and mainly survives thanks to the wonderful cast. Ritchie plays ‘safe’ and stays in familiar territory in a film he could have made twenty years ago.

Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is an American who stayed in Britain after college at Oxford University – mainly because of his overpowering love for his wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery from ‘Downton Abbey’) – and a very lucrative marijuana there. empire built. He makes clever use of the British aristocratic class, who happily let him use the gigantic air-raid shelters under their country houses for the cultivation of hundreds of thousands of cannabis plants for a fee. Now that he’s made a fortune from the weed trade, Mickey wants to hand his business over to the highest bidder; this way he can fully focus on his love for Rosalind. Just when Mickey seems to have made his choice for the elusive Jewish investor Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong), another candidate emerges: an ambitious Chinese mobster who calls himself Dry Eye (Henry Golding) and likes to profile himself as the ‘Chinese James Bond’. ‘. Dry Eye isn’t about to just go along with Mickey’s choice. Bizarrely, Irish boxing coach Coach (Colin Farrell), who tries to keep troubled youth off the streets, also gets involved in the case. He doesn’t really like crime, but his boxing skills turn out to be damn handy. Meanwhile, shady private detective Fletcher (Hugh Grant, with tinted lenses and an uncomfortable reddish-brown leather jacket), at the behest of the even shady newspaper mogul Big Dave (Eddie Marsan), pays a visit to Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), Mickey’s right-hand man. who does the difficult jobs for him. He claims to have incriminating information about Mickey and tries to blackmail him through Raymond. For convenience (or just for show, who knows?) Fletcher has put the events into a movie script he’s dubbed “Bush,” and as he lays out the story, he reveals himself as an unreliable narrator. In this way he embellishes, obscures and distorts something and Ray, like the viewer, is in the dark about what is true and what is not.

With ‘The Gentlemen’ Guy Ritchie returns to the genre he is good at: well-told, complex crime scum with an all-star cast who can indulge themselves with accents, clothing and accessories and even unabashedly shine as the scene asks for it. He doesn’t need big budgets at all; the strength lies with Ritchie at its best in the script, the colorful characters and the cast. In that respect, little could go wrong with ‘The Gentlemen’, at least on paper. The complexity in the narrative structure is mainly due to the fact that the story is told by Fletcher, a man who does not exactly radiate reliability. Hugh Grant seems to get better and better over the years, precisely by choosing different roles than the ones we are used to from him. Grant no longer plays smooth romantic leads, but men with a jagged edge that you’re not sure if you should go into business with. Grant visibly enjoys his role (check his self-indulgent gaze at the sight of Ray’s barbecue heating the legs while the meat is roasted!) and is a joy to watch, even though his character knows the brilliant ‘The Conversation’ ( 1974) by Francis Ford Coppola (!). McConaughey, Farrell, Hunnam, Marsan and Golding are also on track. Farrell, in particular, steals the show as a boxing coach in a checkered tracksuit who comes across as if he has no idea what he’s gotten himself into, but knocks everyone to the ground when necessary. Dockery has few scenes but knows how to portray Ros as a steel-hard gangster sweetheart. Because of the fun the actors have and the occasionally brilliant one-liners and dialogues (‘In France, it’s illegal to call a pig Napoleon, but try and stop me’) you forgive Ritchie the lack of depth in the script, the blanks in the story (for example, what is the added value of the subplot around the millionaire’s daughter?) and the not always politically correct stereotypes that pepper the film. We’ve all seen it before twenty years ago; then it was new, spectacular, fresh and daring. The brilliance may be gone by now, but this formula is still entertaining.