THE GENTLEMEN
****
Director: Guy Ritchie
Screenwriter: Guy Ritchie
Principal cast:
Matthew McConaughey
Charlie Hunnam
Hugh Grant
Michelle Dockery
Colin Farrell
Jeremy Strong
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 113 mins.
Australian release date: 1 January 2020
Previewed at: In season at the Verona Cinema, Paddington, Sydney.
Hallelujah! Guy Ritchie has returned to the turf of his early filmmaking years, once again displaying his penchant for ‘bovver’ boys and crims working the streets of London, with his new film The Gentlemen. You know you’re back on familiar ground when one of the first lines of dialogue you hear is “I’ll have a pint and a pickled egg.” Ritchie has not just directed and written the screenplay, he co-produced it as well, so his hands are all over this movie. After a bit of a career slump in recent years, with the exception of Aladdin in 2019 (although, let’s face it, a drover’s dog could’ve directed that title, it had such a vast built-in audience), The Gentlemen is a welcome return to form. In this instance he has gathered a group of actors together who appear to be having a ball with a script that’s riddled with profanities and a sly but intelligent dig at the British class system, the power of the ‘red top’ press in the UK, and the differences between the English and their American cousins.
Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) was a kid from an impoverished family in the States when he won a scholarship to an Ivy League university in Britain and, to support himself while there, dealt ‘bush’ (marijuana) to his fellow students, creating such a profitable business that he dropped out and remained in the Ol’ Dart. Now a major drug lord exclusively dealing in top-notch ‘skunk’, he’s married to an equally ambitious woman from a similarly working-class background, Rosalind (Michelle Dockery, in a delightfully different role to her portrayal of Lady Mary Crawley in Downton Abbey), who runs a garage for hotted-up luxury cars. The besotted couple enjoy a luxurious life-style that could all be about to change because Mickey is considering selling his empire, which some of his competitors may regard as a sign of weakness. Still, he thinks it’s the right time to get out of the business because of the prospect of the trade being legalised in the future. In the meantime, his consigliere, Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), has been approached by a sleazy private investigator, Fletcher (Hugh Grant - brilliant), who’s attempting to bribe him into paying millions for a file of incriminating evidence he has compiled about Mickey. This byzantine, convoluted story unfolds during the conversation between these two men as we discover the chain of events that led to their meeting and the subsequent mayhem that ensued.
Ritchie knows his stuff and The Gentlemen is an astute observation of this shadowy world of crooked Lords and press barons, chancers and dancers, Chinese Triads and Russian oligarchs, gym junkies and heroin ones. The performances he has garnered from his cast are extraordinary: Grant is fantastic as the gay Cockney P.I. determined to pocket enough dosh to escape to the Californian sunshine; McConaughey plays his usual ‘smooth operator’ character but he does it so well it doesn’t matter if we’ve seen it before; Hunnam is very good as the measured, somewhat sinister, Raymond; and Dockery is a revelation as the Cockney-accented, foul-mouthed, stiletto-wearing Ros, a force to be reckoned with - we have never seen her on screen like this before. There are also some very funny scenes with Colin Farrell as ‘Coach’, a guy who runs a gym for street kids (Manchester grime rapper Bugzy Malone is one of the lads), who inadvertently ends up owing Mickey a few favours. Coach’s choice of apparel is a hoot!
There are moments when the extremely coarse language could have become grating but Ritchie succeeds in keeping it all in perspective and it is, in fact, hilarious at times, in line with the type of characters portrayed on screen. Some of the dialogue flirts with racism, too, but, again, Ritchie manages to keep this side of the line. The film moves along at a rollicking pace and delivers nearly two hours of craziness, complete with projectile vomiting, gun slaying, obscure sex acts and even a rather honest declaration about the negative effects of hard drugs (although it doesn’t preach to the audience). This is a very cool look at the underbelly of British society, a slice of life that will be alien to a large percentage of its audience. It tells a tale of bedlam that keeps you guessing until its conclusion and is ultimately thoroughly satisfying and darkly amusing. If you’re looking for something edgy and a little bit ‘out there’ this holiday season, you’ll want to introduce yourself to The Gentlemen.
Screenwriter: Guy Ritchie
Principal cast:
Matthew McConaughey
Charlie Hunnam
Hugh Grant
Michelle Dockery
Colin Farrell
Jeremy Strong
Country: USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 113 mins.
Australian release date: 1 January 2020
Previewed at: In season at the Verona Cinema, Paddington, Sydney.
Hallelujah! Guy Ritchie has returned to the turf of his early filmmaking years, once again displaying his penchant for ‘bovver’ boys and crims working the streets of London, with his new film The Gentlemen. You know you’re back on familiar ground when one of the first lines of dialogue you hear is “I’ll have a pint and a pickled egg.” Ritchie has not just directed and written the screenplay, he co-produced it as well, so his hands are all over this movie. After a bit of a career slump in recent years, with the exception of Aladdin in 2019 (although, let’s face it, a drover’s dog could’ve directed that title, it had such a vast built-in audience), The Gentlemen is a welcome return to form. In this instance he has gathered a group of actors together who appear to be having a ball with a script that’s riddled with profanities and a sly but intelligent dig at the British class system, the power of the ‘red top’ press in the UK, and the differences between the English and their American cousins.
Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) was a kid from an impoverished family in the States when he won a scholarship to an Ivy League university in Britain and, to support himself while there, dealt ‘bush’ (marijuana) to his fellow students, creating such a profitable business that he dropped out and remained in the Ol’ Dart. Now a major drug lord exclusively dealing in top-notch ‘skunk’, he’s married to an equally ambitious woman from a similarly working-class background, Rosalind (Michelle Dockery, in a delightfully different role to her portrayal of Lady Mary Crawley in Downton Abbey), who runs a garage for hotted-up luxury cars. The besotted couple enjoy a luxurious life-style that could all be about to change because Mickey is considering selling his empire, which some of his competitors may regard as a sign of weakness. Still, he thinks it’s the right time to get out of the business because of the prospect of the trade being legalised in the future. In the meantime, his consigliere, Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), has been approached by a sleazy private investigator, Fletcher (Hugh Grant - brilliant), who’s attempting to bribe him into paying millions for a file of incriminating evidence he has compiled about Mickey. This byzantine, convoluted story unfolds during the conversation between these two men as we discover the chain of events that led to their meeting and the subsequent mayhem that ensued.
Ritchie knows his stuff and The Gentlemen is an astute observation of this shadowy world of crooked Lords and press barons, chancers and dancers, Chinese Triads and Russian oligarchs, gym junkies and heroin ones. The performances he has garnered from his cast are extraordinary: Grant is fantastic as the gay Cockney P.I. determined to pocket enough dosh to escape to the Californian sunshine; McConaughey plays his usual ‘smooth operator’ character but he does it so well it doesn’t matter if we’ve seen it before; Hunnam is very good as the measured, somewhat sinister, Raymond; and Dockery is a revelation as the Cockney-accented, foul-mouthed, stiletto-wearing Ros, a force to be reckoned with - we have never seen her on screen like this before. There are also some very funny scenes with Colin Farrell as ‘Coach’, a guy who runs a gym for street kids (Manchester grime rapper Bugzy Malone is one of the lads), who inadvertently ends up owing Mickey a few favours. Coach’s choice of apparel is a hoot!
There are moments when the extremely coarse language could have become grating but Ritchie succeeds in keeping it all in perspective and it is, in fact, hilarious at times, in line with the type of characters portrayed on screen. Some of the dialogue flirts with racism, too, but, again, Ritchie manages to keep this side of the line. The film moves along at a rollicking pace and delivers nearly two hours of craziness, complete with projectile vomiting, gun slaying, obscure sex acts and even a rather honest declaration about the negative effects of hard drugs (although it doesn’t preach to the audience). This is a very cool look at the underbelly of British society, a slice of life that will be alien to a large percentage of its audience. It tells a tale of bedlam that keeps you guessing until its conclusion and is ultimately thoroughly satisfying and darkly amusing. If you’re looking for something edgy and a little bit ‘out there’ this holiday season, you’ll want to introduce yourself to The Gentlemen.
