The Gentlemen: Movie Review

0

The Gentlemen is a crime action-comedy directed by Guy Ritchie, which revisits the fast-paced, twist-heavy nature of his early work and manages to provide solid moments of fresh comedy despite feeling at times stylistically overworked.

There’s a certain rough-around-the-edges charm to Ritchie’s earliest films, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000), and RocknRolla (2008), which his newest production, The Gentlemen, tries to recapture. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work; the film seems to initially ask far too much of the audience in the same way you might struggle to genuinely compliment someone wearing ultra-wide flares at an 80s dress-up party.

It does, however, throw itself into this nostalgic style without any hesitation, and the film’s commitment to building that same sense of energy – and a world occupied by highly eccentric characters – eventually develops into a familiarly entertaining and crudely comic story. Clocking in at just under two hours, this initial rough start makes the film feel like a two-act story, dominated largely by its exhaustive first act and closed-out by a finale filled with more twists than a corkscrew rollercoaster.

The main issue with The Gentlemen is that it feels like a film Ritchie has watched a thousand times in post-production and fine-tuned into a mangled version of what it once was  – I get the sense if I watched the film a few more times I’d see greater value in it than I originally did – and you can’t judge a film on how you might feel about it if you were to push through repeated viewings at some point in the future.

Despite this, there are some fresh moments that feel unique to The Gentlemen which prevent it from being just another rehash of the Lock, Stock formula. The film oozes style through every frame; from the dapper, carmine suits worn by marijuana kingpin, Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), to the exquisite set decoration of Raymond’s (Charlie Hunnam) home, and the female-focussed luxury-car boutique run by Pearson’s tough-as-nails wife, Rosalind (Michelle Dockery).

This recurring style-over-substance motif is as present in the world and story of The Gentlemen as it is in the film itself, and despite some borderline-cringeworthy speeches, wildly erratic variations on accents, and inconsistent momentum throughout the film, it manages to balance just enough charm to never make any of those moments memorably terrible. Jeremy Strong’s turn as the remarkably camp Matthew Berger provides brilliant chemistry against McConaughey’s Pearson, and the tabloid-filth debauched lechery of Hugh Grant’s Fletcher offers a pleasant mix of surprising comedy and predictable one-liners.

Colin Farrell is a stand-out addition to the ensemble as the humbly wise and moral Coach, and gives a captivating performance that only makes you wish he had more time on screen. This seems to capture the general feeling as you tick through the closing minutes of the film; that with so much incredible talent and such an outpouring of stylistic story-telling in its runtime, The Gentlemen is a film that elicits a contradictory feeling; at once both extremely refined and sloppy, unnecessarily stretching out certain parts of the film while suffocating the screen time of others.

The Gentlemen is definitely a film worth seeing, and fans of Ritchie’s earlier work or any of the ensemble cast members will find more than a few gleeful moments to relish in. Unfortunately, it won’t be to everyone’s taste, either due to its sudden moments of violence, blunt-force language, or that the film feels like the cinematic equivalent of drinking a bottle of vintage scotch in one sitting; it’s excessive, self-indulgent, and leaves you with an aftertaste of regret if you aren’t prepared for the experience. But also, like drinking a bottle of scotch in one sitting, I imagine it’ll be infinitely more enjoyable and easier to digest the second time around.

The Gentlemen opens on New Years Day.

~Oxford Lamoureaux

Director: Guy Ritchie Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant.

Oxford Lamoureaux
Latest posts by Oxford Lamoureaux (see all)