After becoming a director for hire with films like Aladdin, Guy Ritchie is back, earning his first name credentials. The Gentlemen is very much an heir to the Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels/Snatch Ritchie, filled with charming, charismatic tough men. And Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery. Wow, is that the flex of all flexes. No one will look at Lady Mary the same way again.
Fletcher (Hugh Grant) goes to a guy named Ray’s (Charlie Hunnam) house for clearly nefarious as well as bonkers reasons. See, Ray is the right hand man of Michael Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), one of Britain’s great marijuana distributors. Fletch has heard a rumor that Michael wants out, hoping to sell the business to a capitalist named Matthew (Jeremy Strong) while Michael settles down with his lovely wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery). Such news has not just hit Fletch either: an up and coming Chinese gangster, Dry Eye (Henry Golding), also hears of Michael’s “weakness,” and hopes to take the middle aged man’s business for his own.
Ritchie is at his best when style and fascinating characters take center stage in his story. I think fondly of Brad Pitt’s Cockney accent in Snatch that’s so insane that none of the characters in the movie know where he’s from. While none of the characters in the Gentlemen approach anything quite as memorable as that, a couple come close. I didn’t mention Colin Farrell because of how tertiary he is to the plot, but like most films the talented Irishman is in, he leaves a wonderful impression as Coach, of which I will not say much more. Michelle Dockery proves that Ritchie isn’t just for the men; her Rosalind has such a swagger and presence about her that Ritchie has you wonder if she or Michael is the greater power player (Dockery is most responsible for the best scene of The Gentlemen). And finally, Hugh Grant is having a jolly old time playing our narrator, as The Gentlemen is basically Fletcher pitching Ray the story of what’s gone down. Grant imbues the whole movie with Ritchie’s charisma, as he weaves this story together with what he’s learned from his paparazziing. Hunnam is great as his foil, stoic and quickly acidic while Grant tries to bait him into reacting (I would love to see the outtakes of their scenes together).
Ritchie’s style is usually their to provide a gloss on the movie so you overlook some plot deficiencies, and The Gentlemen’s no different. The movie’s at its best when Fletcher is pitching Ray, because the story is framed in a meta way like Fletcher is pitching a movie to a studio exec. So you can forget that there’s, ya know, zero cops investigating high profile murders with copious evidence. Grant, McConaughey, Ferrell, and Dockery are so damn charming that you simply don’t care and are happily along for the ride, beginning to end. But if you’re one of those people that isn’t into the Ritchie style, you’ll notice the gaping plot holes early and often, or perhaps, how Colin Farrell is clearly a writer’s device that isn’t called out at all by the meta storytelling.
But why do that, and deprive us of Ferrell channeling his In Bruges character teaching boys how they shouldn’t involve themselves in a knife fight if they don’t know what they’re doing? Or Hugh Grant, while bribing Ray, asks for a steak dinner? The mostly fun blend of violence machismo and silly nonsense makes The Gentlemen just a delight to watch. And its now mandatory that any British action movie should have one member of the Downton Abbey cast doing something badass. I vote Maggie Smith; let’s resurrect Minerva McGonagall.