BUFFALO, N.Y. — Sometimes when you watch a film, it just becomes apparent that the cast is having a riotous good time just making the movie.
Even if there is are fistfights and shootings and chase scenes and other terribly strenuous work, it just seems obvious that everyone is having a grand old time. It’s impossible to truly know just from the viewing if that good time is truly being had, but by gosh it sure looks that way.
This surely seems to be the case with The Gentlemen, director Guy Ritchie’s (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels) latest foray into the caper flick genre. In fact, those of you gentle readers who have seen 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels will find that many of the same elements that made that film a most excellent and entertaining one are also very much present in The Gentlemen.
Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey, Serenity, White Boy Rick) is the Marijuana King of England, and it has made him wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.
However, the impending legalization of weed presents some problems for a man of his criminal background, so he wants to sell his operation, and retire with his beautiful cockney wife, Rosalind (Dockery, Downton Abbey, Anna Karenina). He has a potential buyer in Matthew (Jeremy Strong, Selma, Detroit), but any kind of unwanted attention could drastically reduce the selling price of the operation.
Sleazy private investigator Fletcher (Hugh Grant, Notting Hill, Florence Foster Jenkins) approaches Pearson’s right-hand man, Ray (Charlie Hunnam, Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak) with the results of the investigation that he has undertaken on behalf of Tabloid Editor Big Dave (Eddie Marsan, The Exception, Atomic Blonde), but will keep all the information he’s obtained private, for the right price.
Also, crime lord Dry Eye (Henry Golding, Crazy Rich Asians, A Simple Favor) is also making a bid, albeit a far inferior one, for Pearson’s empire. Now, all of this unfolds in a decidedly non-linear, convoluted but exceedingly entertaining fashion as we learn how Pearson repels the attacks on his empire in order to protect its value and all of the chaos that ensues.
A supremely talented director in any case, Ritchie has a special touch when it comes to the caper flick. His deft treatment of the various characters that inhabit his world combined with the various accents and slang that colors their dialogue is wildly entertaining, but it also requires rapt attention on the part of the audience, or something funny, or crucial to the plot, or both, will be missed.
It is fortunate that his cast has the requisite skill to pull off these verbal acrobatics. They all seem very much up to the task, but a special shout-out has to go out to Grant, who manages to disappear into his oddly accented and totally amoral character. Dockery, too, deserves acknowledgment for her characters cockney accent; not the sort of thing you would hear come from her mouth in Downton Abbey.
The various action sequences are unabashedly violent, but also frenetic and usually terribly funny, even when they have some kind of fatal climax. It takes a certain kind of direction to make a scene wherein a character falls to his death funny, but Ritchie is able to bring that skill to the table.
The Gentlemen is as much a character study as it is an action film. It is by turns violent, funny, and even a bit introspective. The Gentlemen is easily worth 4 out of 5 boxes of popcorn.
The Gentlemen is directed by Guy Ritchie and stars Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant.
Rated R for violence, language throughout, sexual references and drug content and runs 113 minutes.
I'm Larry Haneberg, and I'm taking you 2 the Movies.