Ritchie returns with lackluster ‘Gentlemen’
With a cast including Matthew McConaughey, Hugh Grant and Henry Golding, your mouth will water.
Two hours later you’ll need a drink to cope with what you just saw.
Known for his 1998 crime comedy “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” Guy Ritchie took a decade-long break from the gangster films that made him. After his underwhelming “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” in 2017 and last year’s box-office hit, “Aladdin,” Ritchie gets back to his gangster roots with a lackluster crime caper, “The Gentlemen.”
“The Gentlemen” delivers twists sure to confuse, as well as cringeworthy racial jokes. Add in some bestiality and an attempted rape of a female
character, and you’re left trying to answer the question: “What did I just watch?”
An opening montage describes the ascension of Mickey Pearson (McConaughey), an American drug lord in London who started at the bottom and killed his way to the top. Flash forward years later and Pearson doesn’t want any more blood on his hands; he plans to sell his business to billionaire Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong) so he can retire with his wife.
Word gets out about his retirement plan and a Chinese-British dealer, Dry Eye (Henry Golding), makes a rejected bid for Mickey’s company. The rejection puts Dry Eye and Mickey at odds and the plot thickens.
Enter Mickey’s right-hand man, Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), and a shoddy reporter named Fletcher (Hugh Grant), and things get weird.
Fletcher breaks into Raymond’s house with a plan to sell Raymond a £20 million screenplay that details Mickey’s dirty work. The film takes us into the screenplay and back to the present day often enough to give the viewer whiplash. It becomes hard to tell what is reality and what is within the script.
Just when you thought, “There are so many men in this film,” there’s more. Did this film get an Oscar nod?
Insert a subplot featuring a boxing instructor named Coach (Colin Farrell) and several other players. Ensemble casts are a Ritchie film staple, but stuffing so many characters into an already overflowing plot comes off as trying too hard. The film could have done without some of these characters, though it would be less star-studded.
Take away the confusing plot and throwaway punchlines and the cast is by far the best part of the film — and the reason many will go see it. If only they were part of a different movie. “’The Gentlemen” doesn’t live up to the hype.
Perhaps the real star of the film wasn’t a gentleman at all.
Michelle Dockery controls the screen from beginning to end as Mickey’s wife, Rosalind. While the gentlemen were at war with each other, she and her allfemale chop shop are the anchor that holds down Mickey’s absurdity.
She is the reason he made the decision to get blood on his hands again.
Elizabeth Montgomery is a producer for The Arizona Republic, azcentral.com and the Arizona Storytellers. She is a member of The Arizona Republic’s diversity committee and is an officer of the Arizona Association of Black Journalists. Reach her at emontgomery@azcentral.com or 602-444-8764. Follow her on Twitter @emontnews.
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