Directed by:
Guy RitchieScreenplay:
Guy RitchieCinematography:
Alan StewartComposer:
Christopher BensteadCast:
Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Lyne Renee, Tom Wu, Jason Wong (more)VOD (4)
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The Gentlemen follows American expat Mickey Pearson who built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business forever it triggers plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him. (STX Entertainment)
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Reviews (17)
It’s as if Guy Ritchie was sorry about Aladdin and came up with a movie his fans wanted to see. He was obviously enjoying himself. While I’m not one of those who haven’t been satisfied with Ritchie’s work from recent years, I truly enjoyed The Gentleman;it’s an entertaining movie with a smart and funny screenplay (the whole movie is actually an anecdote whose sole punch line is a single, almost the final, scene), excellent actors including Matthew McConaughey in the role of a modern Vito Corleone, go-getting and sure-handed direction... what more could you ask for?
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Ritchie is a bit restrained this time and delivers a witty action-comedy with direct, typically British humour, which is not for everyone, but it has a sophisticated script and McConaughey as an alpha-male who is hard not root for. A film about drugs presented in such a way that it makes you believe it’s cool to be in the business. Of course, as long as you don’t complicate things, as is the case here. Among the superb, I would put Hugh Grant on top. After the insane mangling of the classic King Arthur, this is finally a return to waters Ritchie understands and relishes. The result does look accordingly, too.
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Guy Ritchie returns to the genre that made him famous and serves up a pure crime gangster flick that is probably the closest thing to Snatch. The film has a very unorthodox storytelling and at times it can seem confusing. Especially at the beginning I couldn't quite get into it, but somewhere in the middle I was enjoying truly it, and a big thanks goes to the awesome performances by the cast. Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam are traditionally excellent, Hugh Grant feels like in the role of a lifetime, and Colin Farrell steals all the scenes for himself and rips your diaphragm! Apart from the performances, the film is pulled up by the great black-dry British humour and the unexpected twists. Guy Ritche has made a playful, stylish, funny and unconventional gangster film and people will love it. 7.5/10.
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Four stars, by a hair’s breadth. It’s not as sophisticated as it wants to be, the final twist is rather banal, and the lukewarm and cluttered first half does the film no credit. Ritchie can do better than that and the current 89% rating on this site is completely overblown. All in all, I enjoyed myself: there are a couple of good ideas and you cannot help but root for excessively elegant McConaughey... but I don’t feel like I’ll want to rewatch this. I almost feel compelled to paraphrase the Bard in saying this is much ado about… well, not entirely nothing, but a slightly above-average film.
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Ritchie’s gangster flicks can be looked at as a genre screen on which the direct projects himself, or rather the current point in his life, career and position in the film industry. At the very beginning of his first film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, we have a group of self-confidently cheeky youths who have not only talent and ambition, but mainly more luck than sense, when they heedlessly set out into the world of omnipotent old structures. Coincidence plays a much smaller role in Ritchie’s second film, but the director, together with the protagonists, gets into a much bigger game with foreign players in a different weight category, from which he cannot allow himself to escape only with a skinned knee. The already forgotten existentially pessimistic Revolver shows the former wunderkind in his element, which he had been away from for a while, consorting with overly powerful people and now doubting himself, so he tries to kick off a big game that will get him back to the top while simultaneously reassessing his own life. RocknRolla expressed a feeling of newly replenished assuredness and, at the same time, bidding farewell to his island roots while also peculiarly focusing on the position of England/Ritchie between Europe and America. Therefore, The Gentlemen isn’t so much a comeback as an attempt to show others and himself that “the king’s still got it”. He has come a long way and from an untested, clever lout, he has developed into a man of elegance over the years and the owner of a stylish pub and his own hipster brewery, which he does not hesitate to advertise. Though he still sympathises with streetwise hooligans with their online projects, he is far removed from them in his pursuits. He mulls over retirement now that he’s in the company of the cream of society and he’s raking it in with lucrative projects, but this seemingly final money spinner put new vitality into his veins in the end. Predation, courage and cheekiness have been replaced by sophistication (albeit in the snobbish superficial sense rather than true sophistication or ingenuity) and pretentious refinement. Gangster movies have always been founded on the motif of the changing of the guard between generations, or rather the conflict between the young and old schools, so in line with Ritchie's age and self-image, this story from the underworld takes an atypical direction that would not have occurred to him in the early days of his career. The question is how this glorified flaccid middle age will be perceived by today’s young people, who are licking their chops at their own opportunities in the genre world of gangsters – in recent years, francophone productions such as the excellent Les Misérables and the hyper-stylish Gangsta have reigned supreme. However, this in no way diminishes the fun and agility of The Gentlemen, which would have ranked among the most satisfying titles in broad distribution in another, stronger year (at least from the perspective of a boomer viewer).
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