THE GENTLEMEN

★★★★ (Cert 18, 113mins)

FOR most men, a midlife crisis involves a powerful motorbike, a younger woman or an electric guitar. But Guy Ritchie isn’t your typical 51-year-old. He celebrated reaching his half-century by going back to his Nineties heyday with a new raft of pantomime gangsters.

The Gentlemen feels like the British crime caper he would have made after Snatch if he

hadn’t been Swept Away by his pretentious pop star wife.

Among the gangsters are Colin Farrell, wearing his Irishness on his sleeves with an array of tartan tracksuits, and Charlie Hunnam as Raymond, an occasionally Scouse mobster. Jeremy Strong is a camp US crime lord known as The Jew. Henry Golding is Chinese kingpin Dry Eye. JasonWong is Phuc.

At times, this trip back to the 1990s veers dangerously close

to self parody. But it is still a wildly entertaining trip down memory lane.

Most of that is down to Hugh Grant whose tongue is firmly in cheek to play unreliable narrator Fletcher. This cockney private eye has broken into Raymond’s mansion to tell him what he’s learned about his business and his American boss Mickey Pearson (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.

The action is stylish staged, the plot is enjoyably twisty and Downton’s Michelle Dockery is clearly having a riot as a cockney gangster’s moll.

But Grant is so entertaining that we’re always looking forward to the next break in the story to hear his funny, nasal drawl and hear another witty, improvised threat.