By CYNTHIA BIDDLECOMB
Los Alamos
“The Gentlemen” is the kind of crime caper where the audience is made to root for one criminal over another. There are many intriguing characters, whose roles soon become clear.
Their dialogue is fast and witty, though the F-word and C-word are used liberally. Twists and turns in the action will keep you glued to your seat. And, although there is obligatory violence, including execution by gun, the audience is not subjected to too much blood, and no gore.
Note: nearly all the characters are men, presumably because men are the most likely to run drug empires.
All that being said, The Gentlemen is very entertaining. There were many laughs, smiles and guffaws to be had watching this film. And the acting is good. Director/screenwriter Guy Ritchie has been compared with Quentin Tarantino; he’s been called the British low-rent version of Tarantino. Those who know Ritchie’s films and remain unimpressed, have deigned to admit this is perhaps his best film. But for those of us less acquainted with Ritchie, we might find The Gentlemen to be worthy of our movie dollars, fast-paced and full of surprises.
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club) plays Mickey, an Oxford-educated American running a marijuana empire in England. Mickey’s beloved wife Rosalind, played by Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey) with a Cockney accent, runs an almost all female repair garage, but she has very little to do with the story, sadly.
For the majority of the film, a sleazy private investigator named Fletcher, played very convincingly by Hugh Grant (Notting Hill) unravels for Mickey’s right-hand-man Ray (Charlie Hunnam of Sons of Anarchy), the story he has put together about Mickey’s criminal undertaking; he is asking Ray to tell Mickey that he would like a very large amount of money to keep that story from seeing the light of day.
As Fletcher’s story unfolds, we learn Mickey wants to sell his empire and that other interests are trying to undermine it to bring the price down. Jeremy Strong plays Matthew Berger, the wealthy guy willing to buy that empire. Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians) is his apparent competition.
Along the way, a boxing coach (Colin Farrell) and his street-kid prodigies get caught up in the action. They add to a running theme of older characters facing younger thugs who don’t respect their experience, expertise and, frankly, their abilities. All of that adds to the movie’s humor, as the older guys chase the younger toughs challenging their authority.
An article in The Hollywood Reporter said this film is “refreshingly funny and deftly plotted, with more witty lines and less boorish machismo than his [Ritchie’s] early work. Violence still plays a key role, but mostly occurs offscreen, and the body count is surprisingly low. In common with most Tarantino films, The Gentlemen is soundtracked by a mixtape of pop classics old and new while the script is larded with verbose, discursive, highly mannered dialogue.” The plot plays out as a battle of wits among all the characters.
The Gentlemen is “Rated R for violence, language throughout, sexual references and drug content.” At one point, as Mickey evokes Situation Ethics talking to another drug kingpin, Lord George (Tom Wu): Mickey says marijuana doesn’t kill people, whereas Lord George’s brown powder and white powder both ruin lives and kill people. We needn’t applaud any of these characters as heroes. But we can go along and let them entertain us with wit and action.
