Summary:
A drug lord tries to sell his empire to a billionaire, but things get complicated.
My Thoughts:
I think Guy Ritchie is a competent director. Early in his career he made some very entertaining comedic gangster flicks (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, “Snatch”- I even think “RocknRolla” is alright); and I think his blockbusters are entertaining as well (the “Sherlock Holmes” series; and make fun of me if you want, but though “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” was absolutely ridiculous, I thought it was also a lot of b-movie fantasy fun). When I saw the trailer for this movie I actually got excited, because though I think Ritchie’s PG-13 blockbusters are fine, he really shines when he’s working with incredibly foul-mouthed, violent and eccentric gangsters. I hoped this film would be a triumphant return to form.
“The Gentlemen” is certainly a return to form, but it’s not triumphant; it’s pretty average.
“There’s only one rule in the jungle: when the lion’s hungry, he eats!”
The once-ruthless Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey, “Reign of Fire”) owns and operates an impressive marijuana grow operation in Britain, but, after marrying Rosalind (Michelle Dockery, “Anna Karenina”), he decides he wants to settle down, and so he approaches a billionaire named Matthew (Jeremy Strong, “The Happening”), and suggests he take over his business. As this transaction is considered, Mickey’s associate Ray (Charlie Hunnam, “Crimson Peak”), is extorted by a private detective named Fletcher (Hugh Grant, “Cloud Atlas”), whom claims to know many things about Pearson’s operation. Also, a boxing Coach (Colin Ferrell, “Widows”) tries to steer underprivileged kids away from messing with Pearson, while, also simultaneously, a man named Dry Eye (Henry Golding, “Crazy Rich Asians”) tries to interfere with the whole transaction. There are other characters involved too, but you get the idea.
So, here’s the thing: the elements of a good movie are all here, but the problem is, with every good thing that the film displays, there’s another equally middling thing that drags the movie down. The way the script is written is incredibly uneven: sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s borderline annoying. The actors: most of them are good (Hugh Grant, Charlie Hunnam, Colin Farrell), while one or two of them look like they don’t want to be there (*COUGH* Matthew McConaughey *COUGH COUGH*). The cinematography is flat as can be. The editing is sometimes fun. The way the story flips back and forth is pretty cool for a while, but then, by the middle of the second act, I could tell the story was just going to be kind of generic, and I wished for some more action. This whole movie sort of played a back and forth game with me. I loved parts, I could’ve cared less about other parts, and in the end, I felt as if the movie was largely forgettable.
I think my biggest problem with this film was just the fact that it tries, so freaking hard, to be incredibly clever, and instead I found myself growing irritated. For example; I feel like Ritchie was trying to appeal to cinephiles by making our narrator, Fletcher, a cinephile who’s trying to sell a screenplay. Fletcher knows a lot about movies and makes a lot of references to movies that probably aren’t on the average marvel moviegoer’s radar, while simultaneously comparing the story he’s telling to a movie. Again, there are scenes where Fletcher is narrating the story that I thought were really interesting, because there are moments where he overindulges in the violence, and we see things as if he had written them in the script. These are honestly some of the more interesting moments in the script; the problem is that none of these moments have any bearing to the overall story, and once you realize that Fletcher is an untrustworthy narrator, you can easily see what scenes are fantasy and which ones are real, and the fantastical sequences quickly lose their appeal.
(MINOR SPOILERS ABOUT THE ENDING)
Another thing I didn’t really appreciate about this film was the fact that, at the end, it features a scene where Fletcher is pitching his ‘script’ to a producer. That script is essentially this movie, and in Fletcher’s pitch, he leaves the ending open, straight up begging the audience to love this film enough to warrant a sequel. I’ve seen Ritchie do this before (the end credits of “RocknRolla” said “Johnny, Archy, and the Wild Bunch will be back in ‘The Real RocknRolla’- it’s been twelve years, and I’ve yet to hear whispers of a “RocknRolla” sequel), and honestly, at this point, it just feels like he’s grasping at straws, trying to make a career out of a genre he left behind twenty years ago.
Verdict:
As I stated at the top of this review, I think Ritchie is a very competent director; I just don’t think he hit his stride with this film. There were certainly moments in this movie that felt very close to the brilliance we saw in “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, but, in the end, “The Gentlemen” really fails to provide anything new or exciting.
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