4 / 5
Matthew Mcconaughey brings his iconic charisma into a very fitting suit and flat-cap image of drug lord Mickey Pearson: a retiring kingpin who decides to sell off his multimillion-dollar marijuana empire before transitioning to a family life with the retired world of golf and English countryside. While this friendly bargain seems like a pronto in-out agreement, Pearson finds his buyer (Jeremy Strong) to be quite the parsimonious type, which results in the usual groaning lashings of blackmail that draws all the criminal players to front-centre attention.
What’s initially striking about the Gentlemen is its hand-guided method of quite literal storytelling. Pearson is more of a far-distant enigma for the film’s first half, as a rough-dressed film buff Hugh Grant recalls all the contextual events to the man’s blackmail crisis in an effectively humorous puppetmaster approach. Cliched as it might be the eager storyteller way of context does well for speeding through non-necessities with a laugh. Charlie Hunnam gets all Tom Hardy for his role as Pearson’s sophisticated right hand and Grant’s blackmail victim and does quite excellently doing so. His brutal energy and professional timing can twist the room’s tone from package-tight drama into blatant hilarity in an eye bat. Same can be said for Mcconaughey, but what new is there to say about this man’s steel-thick shining performances? A suit-donning crime lord needs a little of that sneering intensity for a film like this to work.
Another of the generous handful of big-time stars in the cast is Colin Farrell, who plays a kingpin friend of Pearson known only as ‘Coach’ who sends his trained team of rapping break-dance-fighting youths to undertake big scores. This not only adds a welcome, humorous generational punch to a film about retiring gods but results in some of the film’s most humorous scenes, with Farrell playing a beaten-down gruff juxtaposition to his usual roles.
But other than Jeremy Strong’s snobbish role as philosophical buyer Matthew, there are other envious eyes beaming down on the marijuana stock from their own empires, with Henry Golding bringing a delightfully bitter and vibrant antagonist as Chinese heroin hitman Dry Eye. One can say the Gentlemen’s cast is oversaturated with famed performers to draw box office bloom, but Guy Ritchie knows how to clash contrasting personalities to conjure explosions of chemistry onscreen tension, helped by the fact not one of these entertaining star roles knows who’s ahead of the strategy game, leading to several smoothly-orchestrated twists towards the finale.
But what’s vitally needed for a crime flick’s charisma to fly is a good taste in editing, and while Guy Ritchie’s stylish bonanza of smooth cuts and montages help to augment comedic and explosive intentions from the cast, the film’s style feels remarkably akin to that of Matthew Vaughn’s The Kingsman. Only fitting, given the two’s co-operation on Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and the exaggerated cheesy-camp elements of both films regarding vicious drug infighting by contrastingly brash charismatic stars helps build an odd kind of modern genre. One that deals in projectile vomit, bodies frozen with steaks and masked-robbery rap videos as much as heroin, that is.
If you’re seeking a bloody intellectual game of criminal masterminds with wits then The Gentlemen falls quite short. However, in its tasteful humour, engaging well-rounded script and character interaction it succeeds quite well. Stars like Mcconaughey do justice to their roles and the spectrum of tight-pinch situations and character-sides we witness are enough to make this a thrilling and punchy, though nothing revolutionary, crime hit.