“When the lion’s hungry, he eats!” - Michael ‘Mickey’ Pearson
The Gentlemen is a British gangster comedy directed by Guy Ritchie, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell, and Michelle Dockery. McConaughey plays Mickey Pearson, an American expat who owns a vast network of weed farms. Mickey built his marijuana empire from the ground up, and now that he has all the money and power he could ask for, he decides it’s time to retire, and hand his business off to someone else. However, there are multiple groups of people who intend to steal our protagonist’s business, which creates some problems for him. This is only a tiny fragment of the complex, twisty plot of The Gentlemen, but if I were to tell you everything that happens in the film, we’d be here a while.
Guy Ritchie is most known for gangster comedies like Snatch, and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but there was a period in his career where he broke away from those types of films to direct things like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and 2019’s Aladdin. The Gentlemen serves as a return to form for Ritchie, and what a glorious return it is! This is Guy Ritchie doing what he does best: making an incredibly entertaining and smart film with tons of violence, cursing, and thrills.
One thing in The Gentlemen that is carried over from Ritchie’s earlier films is his signature hyper-fueled style. Picture what Quentin Tarantino films might be like if Tarantino was British, and you have yourself a Guy Ritchie movie. The editing is frenetic, the camerawork is very unconventional, and the music is brilliant and stylish. The set pieces are gorgeous, and the locations are captured gracefully.
All of the characters in The Gentlemen are fascinating, and all of them have a certain level of class and professionalism no matter how shady their dealings are. The characters are all diverse, and so are their costumes. Each character has a specific look that is unique to them, and the costume department does a wonderful job of showing the characters’ differences through their outfits.
Each actor does an excellent job of getting into character. All of the actors give everything they have to these roles, and it really pays off. Hugh Grant, Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, and Colin Farrell especially stand out. Each mannerism and every minute detail is expertly portrayed by these actors. Each performance feels genuine, and there are never any moments where it seems like the actors aren’t having an absolute blast.
The script is incredibly smart and blends reality with fiction. There are moments where it is hard to tell whether an event is actually happening, or if it’s just the figment of a character’s imagination. The film feeds you lots of information very quickly, and there are never any moments that feel boring or stale. All of the dialogue is sharp, witty, profane, and hysterically funny. The British slang makes following the dialogue especially fun, but it also makes it so that you have to pay closer attention to what’s being said if you aren’t familiar with the dialect.
There are only a couple of things that I consider flaws in this film. One of the things I noticed on my second viewing was that the pacing in the first act is a tad bit slower than the pacing of the rest of the film. This is not to say that the first act is boring. It just takes a while to set things up since there are so many arcs involved in the story. Something else I found is that the film can be hard to follow on first viewing. I don’t consider this to be a negative thing, but I know that there are some people out there who might. To those people, I warn you that this is a film that benefits from multiple viewings.
The Gentlemen is two hours of pure, unfiltered fun, and to the people who say Guy Ritchie has lost his touch, I urge you to go see this film. It’s loud, it’s violent, it’s obnoxious, and it’s some of Ritchie’s best work since Snatch. If you like gangster movies, go see The Gentlemen. If you like action comedies, go see The Gentlemen. Heck, if you just want a fun, entertaining movie, go see The Gentlemen. I promise you it’ll be worth your time.
Rating: R
Grade: A
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