All the films directed by Guy Ritchie over the last decade that I have seen have been disappointments to me, so I was very close to skip seeing ‘The Gentlemen‘ in theaters, leaving it, maybe, for a later viewing. What convinced me in the end was the impressive note on IMDB (8.1). Over 40,000 film fan mates can’t go wrong, I told myself, and I’m not sorry. ‘The Gentlemen‘ is Ritchie‘s best film I remember ever seeing (but I should mention that I did not see ‘Snatch‘ made at the beginning of his career, which I read a lot of good things about). ‘The Gentlemen‘ is a violent action movie, stylish, funny, original, with a select cast. Those who don’t like gangster movies would probably do well to avoid it, but all the other movie lovers have a lot of reasons to go and see it.
Guy Ritchie is not a director who walks the beaten track. Even when he has an interesting and an already complicated story in his hand like ‘The Gentlemen‘, he chooses to tell it in an unconventional way. In other films I had the impression that preoccupation with his own directorial vision spoils the effect, but here the convention created by him works very well. What we have in the film is a story about gangsters fighting for control over the narcotics manufacturing and distribution industry in today’s England. An upper-class Mafia-style boss (Matthew McConaughey) plans to sell his business, and two rival gangs fight to get their hands on it. In addition to the fact that the story is quite complicated already, it is narrated in cinematic style by a blackmail journalist / detective (Hugh Grant), who beautifies it by presenting it in the form of … a movie script. The pretext is created not only for a ‘movie-in-movie’ narrative, but also to permanently question what we see on the screen. Do we see what actually happened? Do we see a version invented or modified to serve the purposes of the blackmailer? Or maybe what we see is fiction, the fruit of a script writer’s imagination?
It will take the average viewer (the category I like to fall in) about 10-15 minutes to understand the unconventional way the story is told and get used to it. If he manages to cross this threshold, I think, there are enough moments of cinematic satisfaction and good quality entertainment in this film. The distribution is excellent. Matthew McConaughey transitions professionally from his roles as a good and handsome guy to the role here of a (very) bad and handsome guy. Hugh Grant already has 35 (!) years of career behind him, but it seems that he is only now maturing and moving from the beau roles to senior acting, and what an actor he is! I think part two of his career will be even better than the first. Nearly unrecognizable and just as good is Colin Farrell. The fourth ace in Ritchie‘s hand is Charlie Hunnam , an actor whom I know less, but who acts at parity with his famous partners. I was told that I should be familiar with Michelle Dockery , but I am not as I didn’t see ‘Downton Abbey‘, and I confess that she didn’t impress me here. Certainly, in ‘The Gentlemen‘, the male side rules. There are many memorable scenes in the film, especially those that rely on class differences, as they are expressed in language, behavior, and tools of violence. The scenario is very talkative, which may seem a little inappropriate because gangsters generally talk less and shoot more, but that’s part of the convention. Finally, I can say that I liked ‘The Gentlemen‘ and that the film has restored the stature of Guy Ritchie in my eyes.