In really great movies by filmmaker Guy Ritchie, there ARE no good guys….just some eccentric characters being really, really bad.
And yes, ‘The Gentlemen’ IS a great film. It doesn’t quite reach the apex of ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ or ‘Snatch’, but it has that misbehaving vibe (some of the shenanigans, admittedly, very anti-PC) that makes it a tough one to turn away from. You get the feeling that the cast is having a blast with the material….and that just seems to make the energy crackle all the more.
Ritchie also co-wrote the story which pits American Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) as the undisputed king of England’s marijuana trade. But Mickey is looking to retire to a quieter life with his wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery of ‘Downton Abbey’), attempting to sell his empire to Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong) who, like Pearson, is American and very, very rich.
But glitches occur. First, Mickey’s grand operation is raided by a wacky gang of tracksuit-wearing thugs, who appear to view beat downs as art, turning their assaults into what looks like bizarre music videos. Meantime, the greedy head of a local Chinese crime syndicate (Henry Golding of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’) makes his bid to take over Mickey’s plantation, and isn’t exactly sportsmanlike in his moves. We keep up on every swerve through the ramblings of Fletcher (Hugh Grant), a sleazy journalist who is trying to extort cash from Mickey’s vault via his right hand man, Ray (Charlie Hunnam).
‘The Gentleman’ is a quirky, elaborate ball of mobsters and assassins, all brandishing as many one-liners as weapons. The performances are all entertaining, none more so than Colin Farrell, who plays a gym owner. Overly ornery in order to hit the cartoonish high point deserving of such a brilliant supporting effort, Farrell’s small but memorable part captures exactly why this film works – he’s silly, he’s a little complicated, he has a temper, and you can bet there are a handful of film goers who won’t like him – yet, you can’t wait to see what will do next.
