Movie Monday May 23: The Gentlemen

I’ve been wanting to see my pick for this week for a while, since pre-pandemic, and I finally got the chance. Guy Richie’s newest movie The Gentlemen, like many of his previous work, is a wild ride from start to finish. You never know where the story is going and are left guessing until all the pieces are put together.

**Warning, mild spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t watched the movie yet, what are you doing?**

American drug kingpin and Rhodes Scholar Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is the UK’s premier supplier of marijuana. The secret to his success? Building his labs under aristocratic estates, allowing his business privacy and various lords and ladies the funds to pay for their grand houses and high living. After years in the game and before weed is legal in the UK, he decides to put his violent past behind him and retire. He approaches American billionaire Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong) as a potential buyer. During the month of negotiations for the price of £400 million, several things go awry. Dry Eye (Henry Golding), an ambitious underboss for Chinese gangster Lord George (Tom Wu), approaches Pearson to buy his business, one of Pearson’s labs is raided by amateur MMA fighters and YouTube rappers “The Toddlers”, and Big Dave (Eddie Marsan), a tabloid editor, decides to find dirt on Pearson after a public snubbing. Fletcher (Hugh Grant), the private detective hired by Big Dave, approaches Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), Pearson’s right-hand, to sell all the information he has, aka blackmail, in the form of a screenplay called Bush. Caught up in all of this is Rosalind (Michelle Dockery), Pearson’s wife who runs illegal car parts, Coach (Colin Farrell), trainer of “The Toddlers”, and Laura (Eliot Sumner), heroin addict and daughter of Pearson’s friend Lord Pressfield (Samuel West). Several violent storylines come together as told by Fletcher’s screenplay, though it’s hard to tell what is real and what is fiction. There’s Aslan (Danny Griffin), a young Russian who falls off a balcony, Phuc (Jason Wong), Dry Eye’s henchman who gets hit by a train, and several assassination attempts and double crosses. Pearson’s retirement plans are in jeopardy and so are the lives of everyone around him, but ultimately he ends up back where he started, as the king of the jungle.

Guy Richie’s movies always have so many twists and turns. Just when you’re expecting one thing to happen, the opposite can occur. There’s also a great mix of action and comedy. Like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you’ll spend just as much time laughing as sitting on the edge of your seat. The use of a story within a story, Fletcher’s screenplay, is also really interesting storytelling wise. The smallest moments in Fletcher and Raymond’s scene pay off later in the movie. Nothing is just thrown out there

Every character, no matter how small, is well rounded and with an all star cast, the acting is on point. I’m used to seeing Michelle Dockery in more “highbrow” roles, like Downton Abbey and Anna Karenina, but I love her cockney character in this. Colin Farrell is also a stand out. Many of his scenes are short, but they make an impact.

I’d definitely recommend The Gentlemen to any Guy Richie fans, but also to anyone who likes a twisting story that’ll keep you guessing. There’s also rumors of a Netflix series based on the film, so we’ll see where the story continues.

One scene that made me laugh: It has to be a tie between Coach’s introduction at the chip shop or “The Toddlers” rap sequence. Their song has been stuck in my head for the last 24 hours.

One scene made me wince: When Pearson confronts Lord George about Dry Eye. I won’t spoil it, but all I’ll say is you might need a strong stomach for this one.

Overall, I’d give The Gentlemen 9 “paper weights” out of 10.