The Gentlemen
An American with Scottish roots, Mickey (Matthew McConaughey), happens to be one of Britain’s largest drug lords. Looking to get out of the game and enjoy time with his family, Mickey is looking to put his business for sale on the black market. But, when perspective buyer, Matthew (Jeremy Strong), gets a look at the operations, everything goes sideways. Kill or be killed, it’s hard to be king without a bit of help, enter Ray (Charlie Hunnam), Mickey’s right hand man; righting the ship and keeping the profit margin high will take extra time, effort, and a few more friends. Just where exactly does the carnage begin and end?
Written and Directed by Guy Ritchie, this colourful installment of the Ritchie testosterone, British gangsters, fighters, and bad-assery picks up with much of the same tone and timbre of previous works such as Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. In fact, in terms of specific voice one might argue a considerable amount of the dialogue and pithy humor featured in each of these volumes could easily be cut and pasted interchangeably. Although, it should be noted The Gentlemen feels particularly raged and aggressive in tone, as if to say Ritchie decided to take all of the hardest points of his previous works and amp them up even louder, necessary or not. Meanwhile, the film’s overall pacing seems to run at an odd meter, something that could be addressed with a few more judicious cuts. Regardless, getting the chance to dip one’s toe in the fictionalized pool of the UK’s underbelly is always a fun way to safely spend a few hours with witty cockney sayings, wise-guys getting wiser, rock and roll attitude, and a fair amount of head shots splattering the screen in technicolor red! Solid, and don’t forget to adjust your ear for accent, there’s much ephemera to be absorbed in the language. The Gentlemen is rated R, for a reason!