I am not personally familiar with any of Guy Ritchie's work, but if this film is any indication of his directorial style, as many suggest that it is, then I already know I'm not going to be the biggest fan from here on out. Ritchie's The Gentlemen is a decently exciting and mildly amusing crime thriller that, for better or worse, is exactly what I expected. Going into this film blind of the knowledge of Ritchie or even what this story was supposed to be about was probably my best decision, but one that did not pay off in the end. The enormous cast of this film was fantastic and they are each so talented in their own right but when given a lackluster, racist, and unsettlingly homophobic script, I just could not back whatever Ritchie was trying to sell. Thankfully, I did enjoy a lot of the chemistry between these actors and some of the humor was executed well but many creative choices that were made to tell this story fell right into the trap of screenwriting clichés, which includes some of my biggest pet peeves about filmmaking.
Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), an incredibly powerful American drug lord, is planning on retiring from the business to settle down with his wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery). When up-and-coming crime bosses Dry Eye (Henry Golding) and Matthew (Jeremy Strong) hear about Pearson's plans, they decide to make him offers that he can't refuse in order to buy him out. Through blackmailing, a bit of gratuitous violence, and a massive cast of character actors, the estate of Pearson is sought after in the most unnecessarily chaotic crime thriller of the year. This script, written by Ritchie himself, Ivan Atkinson, and Marn Davies, is only part of the problem into why I did not enjoy this movie as much as I would have liked to. This script relies way too heavily on Ritchie's quick direction and ends up being frankly dull. It took me a hot second to really figure out what was even happening in this film because Ritchie dives right into the action without nearly any exposition. While the opening scene did its job by having me hooked, there were so many subplots and intertwining stories that were very difficult to follow. Once the film got in the swing of things, it was a bit easier to understand the complicated crime plot but the intensity of this film is what hits hard and never exactly stops. The Gentlemen teeters on the edge of incomprehensible plot, akin to what the Coens did with Burn After Reading. But unlike the latter, Ritchie's film had no reason as to why it seemed to have no satisfactory conclusion.
The script also makes a lot of choices for some characters that I did not really agree with and therefore I had a really hard time even feeling for any of them. The over-exaggeration and borderline predatory representation of gay men in the character of Fletcher (Hugh Grant) became quite irritating and while it is just a small detail of this larger film, it was quite inappropriately pronounced. I also did not enjoy how many of these characters slung racial slurs back and forth to each other without any consequence. It would have made sense if this was a period piece set a while ago but the fact that so many of these unfortunate terms were used was a bit too much. This is very prevalent throughout the entire movie and there is even a scene in which the character Coach (Colin Farrell) attempts to explain why a specific instance is not, in fact, racist. This entire exchange was very ironic; not only because Ritchie inadvertently outs himself as holding those racial stereotypes, but also because it reveals his surprising weakness as a writer in anything other than dialogue. The conversations and interactions between these characters are undeniably witty, as they each carry their own personality very well, but this entire film felt extremely flat, regardless.
As I mentioned before, a lot of my issues from this film come from the idea of style over substance. I do not doubt that Ritchie has found such success as a filmmaker because of his directorial style but most of this film was very empty and fell back on its character actors too much. My biggest complaint, however, is Ritchie's direction and the choices he made on how to tell this story. Told through a framing narrative with Fletcher and Ray (Charlie Hunnam), this was a very generic choice. And then to subsequently have Ray, at the conclusion of this film, pitch the exact story to Miramax (with a poster of Ritchie's other film The Man from U.N.C.L.E. hanging in the background) is just lazy screenwriting disguised as ingenuity. I really do not like it when directors break the fourth wall with on-the-nose gags like these and this one was no different. I also did not enjoy how many unnecessary twists were present in this film's ending. I felt like this movie went on for at least a half-hour longer than it should have and there were so many points that it felt like it could actually end and *decently* make sense. However much I did not enjoy Ritchie's direction or many of his choices, I can not help myself but love this cast and their sheer chemistry. They are all very hilarious and a lot of their humor is genuinely funny. There are some great action sequences and plenty of adrenaline to keep the audience interested, which at the end of the day, is what this kind of film is really about.
The Gentlemen is anything but gentle and the way that Ritchie handles this chaotic story did not exactly work for me. While I love the cast and appreciate their efforts, it was a bit disheartening to see them put so much work into a wildly mediocre crime film only to have it become a muddled mess. However, this film is definitely the perfect January release to come from a major studio, so make of that what you will.
My Rating: ★★½
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