Sleazy PI digs up comedy gold in ‘Gentlemen’
NEW YORK — Hugh Grant scores as easily the sleaziest — and funniest — private investigator imaginable in Guy Richie’s latest gangster romp, “The Gentlemen.”
Grant’s Fletcher is a relentless PI hired by a nasty tabloid editor to dig up damaging dirt on Matthew McConaughey’s marijuana mogul.
As he carefully plots to stay alive amid this bunch of brutal thugs and killers, Fletcher explains, teases and recounts all the juicy details to McConaughey’s closest compadre, Charlie Hunnam.
As Fletcher, Grant would seem to be comedically channeling the headlinechasers he famously battled in real life years ago.
“You may have heard me talk about this before,” Grant, 59, began during a Whitby Hotel sitdown. “I know some of these PIs through the campaign about press ethics I’ve been doing the last eight years.
“Some of these guys — who used to hack my phone or steal my medical records or organize burglaries in my flat — have now come over to our side.
“A lot of them have been to prison now and they’re angry that the bosses have never been properly prosecuted or punished. So, they want to help put them away.
“It is quite odd. I’ll be at my birthday party and my mate who runs the campaign will say, ‘Hugh, I don’t think you’ve met Joe Bloggs here. He burgled your flat in 1995,’ and I’ll go, ‘Hello Joe. Come in and have a drink. I think you know where everything is.’”
Has he really been able to forgive the scum who nearly destroyed his life?
“I seem to have,” he answered. “Because my beef is with their bosses.”
As for his dastardly Fletcher, Grant, as he usually does, invented an elaborate, imaginary backstory.
“I had him down as the kid at school,” Grant said, “who wants to be in with the cool set and he’s not.
“He’s the guy who for some reason had the keys to the headmaster’s office and said, ‘Should we sneak in there? Do you guys want to come?’ and no one wants to go with him.
“He’s been left out yet is still dazzled by the cool kids and certainly villains. Whether real villains or villains in films, he has this whole obsession with cinema.”
Ultimately Fletcher, in Grant’s view, is unable to grow up, “He lives in a room in his mother’s house.”