The Gentlemen Review

After many years away, Guy Ritchie returns to the gangster genre with his latest film The Gentlemen.

Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is an American crime lord who built up a cannabis empire in the UK. After many years in the business, Mickey decides to retire and sell his business to another American, Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong). Mickey decision starts a chain of events that involves a Chinese gangster, Dry Eye (Henry Golding), trying to muscle in on the deal, a tabloid newspaper editor (Eddie Marsan) wanting to get revenge against Mickey, and an Irish boxing coach (Colin Farrell) who accidentally gets involved with the criminal underworld.

The geezer gangster genre is Ritchie’s safe place – if he hits hard times he can fall back to making one of these films. After Ritchie made Swept Away and Revolver he made Rocknrolla which was seen as a return to form for the director. A couple of years ago Ritchie made King Arthur: Legend of the Sword which was one of the biggest flops of 2017.

The Gentlemen has all the Ritchie tropes you would expect from one of his gangster films –  there was a convoluted story that had multiple plot threads, colourful characters, and Ritchie showing off with stylish visuals. Structurally and story-wise The Gentlemen was more of the same from Ritchie and his fans will be pleased by this film.

Compared to Ritchie’s other gangster films The Gentlemen does have one difference – the focus on the upper echelons of the criminal world. Ritchie’s other gangster films focused on people who were on the lower end of the criminal ladder and generally focused on people who had to pay a big debt. Mickey was someone who was described as gentrified and he got to hang out with the aristocracy and members of the royal family. Mickey dresses like a country bumpkin, he wore tweed jackets and partook in hunting.

The aristocracy plays a vital part in Mickey’s operation. These were people who were cash poor but had to maintain large estates and pay for their kids’ expensive education. Mickey offered them a lifeline by paying them to use their land – they are not posh people trying to play gangster like the weed dealers in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.

Charlie Hunnam’s Raymond, who the main character in The Gentlemen, was not in dire straits like Jason Statham or Gerard Butler’s characters. Raymond was Mickey’s main lieutenant and enforcer and he lived a pretty comfortable life.

Ritchie has been criticised as a director who copies from other films and does not comes up with anything original. The Gentlemen does take some ideas from The Long Good Friday, Layer Cake, and even Ritchie’s own Rocknrolla. Like The Long Good  Friday gangsters were trying to make a Trans-Atlantic deal with outside forces trying to scupper it. The subplot where Raymond had to go to a London council estate to find the drug addict daughter of a lord was a combination of Layer Cake and Rocknrolla because Raymond had to do a similar mission the main character in Layer Cake and had a drug-addicted music star, like in Rocknrolla.

Ritchie knows how to make an entertaining film. His first three geezer films, the Sherlock Holmes films, and The Man of the U.N.C.L.E. were well-made films with fun sequences. And he does it do it again with The Gentlemen. The sequence set on a London council estate was a highlight and Ritchie does know how to add tension to a scene.

Ritchie’s problem as a filmmaker is his writing. He uses the same trick over and over again and it gets tiresome. He likes to over-complicate his films by having so many plotlines and he gets to show how clever he is by tying them all together. The film opens with a private detective (Hugh Grant) telling Raymond the story – it was a sequence that was both expository and up-itself because of the way it was told. The private detective pretty much acts as Ritchie’s surrogate. A lot of the dialogue comes across Tarantino-lite because no character speaks like a real person.

The Gentlemen has a much crueller edge than the rest of Ritchie’s filmography. Ritchie excessively uses the C-word in the film and this gave the film’s 18-rating. When it comes to swearing I am of the view that less is more because overuse of swearing takes away its power. Using that word so much makes The Gentlemen look immature. There was also a scene where one character gets drugged and has relations with a pig in an attempt to make a dark joke – but it came across as mean-spirited.

The worst part of this darker edge came when a character was nearly raped. It was done for shock value, it’s purpose could have easily have been replaced with a similar action like being threatened with a gun.

The Gentlemen had a strong core due to its story and cast but suffers due to some of Ritchie’s worst instincts.