Guy Ritchie’s small-screen take on ‘The Gentlemen’ fun but forgettable
Best known for highly styl- ized action-comedy mov- ies, English filmmaker Guy Ri chie hasn’t exactly stepped out of his comfort zone for a foray into television with “The Gentlemen,” a fairly entertaining eight-part hour- long action-comedy series debut ng on Netflix this week.
It’s inspired by his similarly enjoyable 2019 film of the same name in which expen- sive-suit refinement meets drug-trade violence.
(This would seem to be sim- ilar to the move Ri chie made as a producer with 2000’s “Lock, Stock…,” a seven-part series coming two years after his feature directorial debut, “Lock, Stock and Two Smok- ing Barrels.”)
Hey, sometimes it’s best to stick with what you know.
First, know that you need not have seen the big-screen “Gentlemen” to sip, sophis- ticatedly, on its small-screen cousin. Al hough press materials for the series state it “is set in the world of ‘The Gentlemen’ film,” we get not so much as a quip about Mickey Pearson, the drug kingpin played by Matthew Mcconaughey in the film.
In this streaming offering, it is Ray Winstone’s Bobby Glass who oversees a cannabis empire built on high-yielding weed labs existing underneath Engl sh country estates. One such estate is Halstead Manor, home to the Horniman family.
In the series’ opening minutes, as the Duke of Halstead (Edward Fox) nears death, his problem-solving son Eddie (Theo James) is called home from duty with the British Army to be with the family. Father then instructs son to watch out for his brother, Freddy (Daniel Ings).
“He won’t survive with- out you.”
We soon get a sense of why that may be true when the now-deceased duke’s will
is read, with older brother Freddynotreceivingthewi d-
ll he anticipates, the estate instead being handed to Eddie. First suggesting there may
have been some understand- able Eddie-freddy confusion, Freddy goes ballistic.
And so now we have an important dynamic: Freddy
being the Fredo Corleone to Eddie’s Michael — at least if Fredo were prone to going on cocaine binges and racking up
ge debts to dangerous men such as Tommy Dixon (Peter Serafinowicz), a member of powerful drug family.
As Eddie tries to plot a course of action that wi l free Freddy, he also gets close to Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), the daughter of the imprisoned Bobby and the runner of his business’s day-to-day activities.
Af er learning of the deal his father had made with Glass, which helps to explain how the family has managed to maintain its quite comfy lifestyle, Eddie wants to end the partnership. However, he knows this cannot be done immediately, and he agrees to help Susie with various business-related matters for the time being. The measuredand-steady type, he shows a real affinity for this work, even if he’s hampered by his inexperience at the onset.
Susie, in turn, helps him with his Freddy trouble, which, predictably, goes from simmer to boil at the climax of the first episode.