THE GENTLEMEN

With The Gentlemen, the British director is back on home turf. empire bowls up to his gaff for a gander

An exclusive on-set report from Guy Ritchie’s new movie. Cor blimey, guv’nor!

Where? Longcross Studios, Surrey When? 17 December 2018

Why? Because after Hollywood hits (Aladdin) and misses (King Arthur), Guy Ritchie is back making cleverly constructed crime flicks. Formerly known as ‘Toff Guys’, then ‘Bush’, Ritchie calls The Gentlemen “an interesting sojourn through the highest and lowest echelons of English culture.”

Who’s In It? Charlie Hunnam, Matthew Mcconaughey, Michelle Dockery, Henry Golding, Jeremy Strong, Jason Wong, Colin Farrell — and Hugh Grant who, working against his tabloid-slaying, privacy-crusading image, plays an investigator working for a red-top paper who’s digging up dirt on the crims.

What DID We see? Today’s workload features some tasty confrontations in a garage run by Ros (Dockery), English wife of American drug lord Mickey Pearson (Mcconaughey) who grows marijuana under the grounds of country estates. Mickey is looking to offload his business to his number two, Raymond (Hunnam), to spend more time with his missus. The set is filled with shrink-wrapped motors and staffed by all-female mechanics — in a nice touch, the Pirelli-esque calendars adorning the workshop walls feature lots of hunky men.

so Is It ‘Lock, stock and three

smoking Barrels’? It’s Ritchie back on his beat: a big ensemble cast, complicated plotting, violence, quirky nicknames (Henry Golding is a Triad named Dry Eye), a love of stylised language (“Fuck off back from whence he came”) and improvisation. What’s different is a calmed-down camera style (“I got bored of chucking it about,” says Ritchie) and longer takes. Plus, it’s a love story.

But Does It kick off? Oh yes. We watch with Ritchie, dressed like an English country gent, as a hard-as-nails Dockery faces down Golding’s Dry Eye. The scene soon erupts into violence and Ritchie announces, “I need a static shot for the impending claret.” That’s blood, not Bordeaux wine.

Clockwise from main pic: Matthew Mcconaughey’s Mickey Pearson turns nasty; Fletcher (Hugh Grant) and Raymond (Charlie Hunnam); Michelle Dockery (left) as garage boss Ros; “So you grab his ugly mug like this...” Director Guy Ritchie with Mcconaughey and Hunnam on set; Cleaning up.