Gents Will Be Gents: Slick, cheeky "Gentlemen" showcases what Guy Ritchie does best with stacked cast

The Gentlemen (2020)

113 min.

Screened on January 22, 2020 at Landmark’s Ritz at the Bourse

Release Date: January 24, 2020 (Wide)

In the same laddish, profane vein as 1998’s “Long, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and 2001’s “Snatch”—an early-career one-two punch—director Guy Ritchie (2019’s “Aladdin”) is back to his cockney gangster days with “The Gentlemen,” a slickly dressed, blackly comic crime caper that rides a wave of attitudinal cool. The joke of the title is that none of the characters are actually gentlemen, all of them out for their own survival and calling each other a “C-U-next-tuesday," which should just come across vulgar but sounds like a term of endearment when uttered by the Brits. It might be too cute by half, but “The Gentlemen” is fun to watch as a free-wheeling lark with a stacked cast that’s perfectly matched.

American expat Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) operates a marijuana empire in London with his wife, Rosalind (Michelle Dockery), who runs an auto-body shop as a front for their financing. He plans on selling the business and retire early, receiving offers from other shady characters, like Dry Eye (Henry Golding), an underboss for a Chinese gangster, and American billionaire Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong). When a disgruntled tabloid editor (Eddie Marsan) hires a private investigator, Fletcher (Hugh Grant), to blackmail the cannabis kingpin, the exposed findings are pitched as a screenplay to Mickey’s right-hand man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) for $20 million at his home one late night. "There's fuckery afoot," as crooked twists ensue.

Written and directed by Guy Ritchie, “The Gentlemen” is Guy Ritchie through and through, though this one operates in an appealingly lower key. It still has the filmmaker’s trademarks, like bursts of savage violence (some of it more suggested this time); quirky, chatty characters speaking rapid-fire, Tarantino-esque dialogue through thick accents; and a dark, cheeky sense of humor, but Richie seems to be giving his identifiable style somewhat of a break stylistically, indulging in fewer hyperkinetic visual flourishes. Instead of overpowering everything with show-offy camerawork and editing tricks, Ritchie shows off a playfulness with story structure and basks in the coolness of his cast that is clearly having a ball. 

Top-biller Matthew McConaughey is the driving force and exudes so much swagger and menace as Mickey Pearson, but the showy supporting cast gets the juicier material. Hugh Grant (2018's "Paddington 2") is well-tailored to the part of sleazebag Fletcher, relishing all the flamboyant mannerisms and come-ons to co-star Charlie Hunnam (2015's "Crimson Peak"). As the straight-man in the framing device in which the story is told, Hunnam plays off Grant splendidly and gets his most colorful role as Raymond, being given a rare opportunity to be funny, especially when he talks tough to some heroin addicts in a flat and thereafter chases one of them to retrieve evidence. A wickedly hilarious Colin Farrell (2019's "Dumbo") also mercilessly steals scenes and sports a killer tracksuit as Coach, a boxing-coach gangster who gets to beat the piss out of a group of street punks, that it’s a surprise this is the first time he and Ritchie have worked together. Jeremy Strong (2019's "Serenity") gives an understated comic performance as the effeminate Matthew Berger, and Henry Golding (2019's "Last Christmas") even gets to play against-type and shed his handsome, clean-cut fellow image as the cocky Dry Eye, dubbed a “Chinese James Bond." Finally, in the only major female role, Michelle Dockery puts her refined “Downton Abbey” persona aside and gets to be deliciously saucy as Mickey’s sharp, ball-busting wife Rosalind, his “Cockney Cleopatra.”

Convoluted by design, the plot might go down more smoothly with a pint of beer in one’s system, as it does start to run out of steam with all of the labyrinthine double-crosses and twists upon twists, but the payoffs in seeing who’s one step ahead of whom are satisfying. The aforementioned narrative framework with Fletcher and Raymond also gets very meta, particularly with the resolution involving a pitch at Miramax (this film’s own distributor) and a background one-sheet of Ritchie’s own “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (which co-starred Grant) with Grant in the foreground. Before an out-of-nowhere attempted rape, “The Gentlemen” still remains a lot of fun, even when bestiality blackmail videos and retrograde Asian slurs enter the equation. In a Guy Ritchie joint, anything goes, and it’s a blast to see the bloke return to form.

Grade: B