COMING SOON
A rip-roaring trip down 90s memory lane
LOVABLE FASCISTS? Hitler and the gang if Elsa helps him research his Jew Spotting guidebook.
She agrees, showing him where her horns will sprout when she turns 18 and how the Jews sleep upside down like bats.
There are a couple of missteps. The plot, taken from Christine Leunens’s novel Caging Skies, is very familiar and Waititi’s camp, imaginary Hitler is only funny until it isn’t. The real Nazis, however, are an amusing bunch.
Sam Rockwell is on top form as Jojo’s commander and Stephen Merchant delivers some wellhoned slapstick as a Gestapo chief.
What impresses most is the way Waikiti moves us so seamlessly through the tonal shifts.
You’ll laugh and you’ll sometimes at the same time. cry,
NEXT WEEK: Two British soldiers sent are behind enemy lines in 1917, an eye-popping World War One thriller from Spectre director Sam Mendes. George MacKay stars.
THE WEEK AFTER: Old-school cops Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett to reunite take down an Albanian mobster in Bad Boys For Life. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence return.
THE GENTLEMEN (18) ★★★★
FOR most men, a midlife crisis involves a high-powered motorcycle or a younger woman.
But Guy Ritchie is not your typical 51-year-old. He celebrated reaching his half century by going back to his 90s heyday with a new raft of pantomime gangsters.
Colin Farrell wears an array of tartan track suits. Charlie Hunnam is Raymond, an occasionally Scouse mobster.
Jeremy Strong is a camp US crimelord, known as The Jew. Jason Wong is Phuc.
At times, this trip back to the 1990s veers close to self-parody. But The Gentlemen is still an entertaining trip down memory lane.
Most of that is down to Hugh Grant as Ritchie’s unreliable narrator Fletcher.
This cockney private eye has broken into Raymond’s mansion to tell him what he has learned about his business and his boss Mickey (Matthew McConaughey).
Whenever Raymond threatens to throw him out Fletcher delivers another detail about the inner workings of Mickey’s cannabis empire and Ritchie stages a flashback.