Review: The Gentlemen

Matthew McConaughey stars as an American in England who studied botany and decided his knowledge was best used for the weed industry. He’s now quite the bigwig in the drug scene, but he’s also ready to sell up and retire with his tough, loyal wife Michelle Dockery. Things don’t go quite so smoothly though, and a war breaks out between competing parties for McConaughey’s empire, those being geeky-looking American Jeremy Strong and a Chinese-English upstart known as Dry-Eye (Henry Golding). The story is narrated by an opportunistic P.I. and wannabe screenwriter (Hugh Grant) and told to Charlie Hunnam, McConaughey’s right-hand man. Colin Farrell turns up on the outskirts of this criminal world as another colourful character known as ‘Coach’.

 

Although he’ll occasionally switch genres (the dreary “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword”, the “Sherlock Holmes” films), even fans of writer-director Guy Ritchie (“Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels”, “Snatch”, “Revolver”) have to admit that when he makes a gangster/crime pic he makes the same damn one in the same damn style every same damn time. His film adaptation of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” being all the better for being a bit of an outlier. Well, I’ve never liked the style and I’m damn sick of it by now. Thus, I did not have a good time with this druggie-themed gangster flick. Certainly nowhere near as much of a good time as Hugh Grant was clearly having, in the best performance in the entire film. The rest was a real chore, through not fault of any of the actors. It’s just not my thing, and it’s not an especially good example of what it’s meant to be. Ritchie’s narrative technique of showing and telling is not only irritating, but it’s been done to death. Hell, there isn’t a trick left in his directorial bag that hasn’t already been over-used, primarily by the man himself. The only difference in the whole film to the usual Guy Ritchie cockney gangster film formula is that it’s Matthew McConaughey getting to use the C-word this time. That’s not nearly enough of a difference for me. Hell, Ritchie employing Americans for his films is nothing new anyway, Brad Pitt in “Snatch” for

 

Grant is good, Michelle Dockery is fine, and Colin Farrell is terrific but entirely wasted in too small a role. His first scene is a cracker but it’s a glorified cameo at best, that doesn’t have much overall importance to the plot. I would’ve liked a lot more of him and a lot less Charlie Hunnam (bland) and Jeremy Strong (doing a cheap Stanley Tucci imitation). As for Mr. McConaughey, he’s alright alright alright (sorry), but his best moments are his more serious, menacing ones. I just didn’t care when Ritchie is just telling different stories with fairly similar characters in exactly the same filmmaking style. Since style is the majority of Ritchie’s thing…it leaves the film pretty useless to me. And don’t get me started on the conclusion, which steals/pays homage to a very popular and vastly superior gangster pic from the late 70s/early 1980s. Yeah, that one and you’ll see it a mile off.

 

A bit better than the director’s “King Arthur” movie, but otherwise a subpar British gangster movie, this time dealing with the drug trade. Isn’t the whole marijuana selling thing a bit passé cinematically by now? Some of the performances are commendable, the film is tedious, stale, and not my thing.

 

Rating: D+