The Gentlemen (third-pass / spoilers)
Cert: 18 / 113 mins / Dir. Guy Ritchie / Trailer
It's an odd thing how over the years our favourite films - or at least those we choose to watch the most - aren't always the ones we initially thought the most highly of. I originally scored Rian Johnson's Looper 6/7, despite being a logistical and philosophical masterpiece. The Coen Bros' Inside Llewyn Davis came in one point lower. Yet both have stayed with me ever since, and even made it into by best-of-decade list.
So watching Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen for a third time within a month, I still stand by the reservations from my first and second passes. I still think it lacks the urgency of Lock, Stock, the playfulness of Snatch and the swagger of RocknRolla. I still think Matthew McConnaughey, while he throws in his all, isn't quite right for the role of Mickey Pearson.
CONTACTS Apart from anything else, although Pearson has been in the UK since his university days, he's still very outwardly American - using that to his advantage with underworld and aristocratic contacts alike. But because his rival of Jeremy Strong's Matthew Berger is also from the US, what we end up with is two outsiders arguing over the turf of a third party (ie the UK). To have Pearson be a British kingpin bristlingly defending his spot (eg Lenny in RocknRolla) would have made for a more dynamic film. If anything, the 'natural' protagonist with this cast should be Henry Golding's Dry Eye, having been brought up on London's streets. Alas, his character is firmly second-tier (albeit as part of an incredibly strong second-tier).
Likewise, Charlie Hunnam's Raymond isn't quite as roguish as the screenplay needs him to be, despite a choice scene with a machine gun (which he very obviously did not have under his coat when sprinting thirty seconds earlier, especially given that it hangs below the coat-line when he re-conceals it) and some beautifully eyebrow-raising language. And had The Toddlers appeared in an earlier Ritchie flick, they'd have fit right in with the grime, desperation and ineptitude; here they're oddly out of place.
ARRIVALS But I digress. Truth be told, this third-pass was engineered in the capital to fit in with a jaunt down to Shepherd's Bush to visit The Princess Victoria pub from the film's opening moments. We jaunted, we visited, we saw the sights. Marvellous stuff.
The Gentlemen is cracking fun and has already earned a pre-booked place on my shelf for slick, easygoing, loudmouthed carnage. It's not the best student in its class, but is already a favourite. Apart from anything else, how many other 5/7s have had three turns in a cinema round these parts?
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The Gentlemen (second-pass / spoilers)
Cert: 18 / 113 mins / Dir. Guy Ritchie / Trailer Ah, that's better. Ever one for a convoluted yarn which becomes clearer with repetition, Guy Ritchie plays true to form and a second viewing of The Gentlemen is a much more jaunty ride. The web is tighter, the violence is weightier and the bad language is every bid as gloriously, needlessly lurid as it was the first time. I'm not saying that any cinematic reveals appear miraculously or that the score gets notched up for a second-pass, but this is definitely now a movie I can envision enjoying with regularity (and with alcohol) in years to come.
Is The Gentlemen Ritchie's best work to date? It is not. Does it show him developing his style as a filmmaker and using old tools to new effect? It does not. But is the film worthy of shelf-space with Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and RockRolla? Most certainly. And is The Gentlemen the fourth part of a spiritual tetralogy with these earlier films? Well not quite...
GUY The Gentlemen is never as grimy as its predecessors. And that's fine because like Guy, we're moving in a different world, now. We don't see the sex-shop-magnate's office, the East End pawn shop or spend too much time in a dingy crack-den. All of our players here have money and power from the off, they're just squabbling over each others. There's no real chase, just a fight for survival. There's no MacGuffin.
Now. The MacGuffin (alternately McGuffin or Maguffin) is a plot device, usually an object or person, which draws the tale's disparate characters together. It's the thing which everybody's after, which would solve all their problems if it fell into their possession, despite usually being the source of those problems at the same time. Whether it's the The One Ring, the Death Star Plans or Doug from The Hangover, the MacGuffin is a classic storytelling device, and for good reason.
What's more, Mr Guy Ritchie is no stranger to this. Each of his three previous geezer-flicks have had their characters racing around London after treasured items. In Lock, Stock it was a pair of antique shotguns, Snatch boasted a huge diamond, and in RocknRolla the object of everyone's affections was Uri Omovich's lucky painting. All of these are old-school artefacts, still sought after as hard currency by the modern criminal businessman, very much a window into Ritchie's psyche at those points.
DOLL In 2020 however, Mickey, Matthew, Fletcher and Dry Eye forego these trinkets. We open with a pivotal feint, then a legthy establishing scene in a kitchen-diner that's worthy of a stage-production. The introduction of Fletcher's screenplay brings us kicking and screaming into the ethos of cinema and a catchup/flashback for the first two acts, structuring the story that way instead. Along with Charlie Hunnam's Ray, we're listening to a shaggy-dog story rather than chasing the dog itself (another of Guy's earlier MacGuffins).
There's the small matter of a van-full of stolen weed, not to mention the missing child of a wealthy family who's fallen into a pit of substance-abuse, but these are red herrings. Both have appeared in earlier movies by the writer/director, and serve here only as tonal callbacks. Potentially, Mickey Pearson's dozen underground farming outlets are the MacGuffin - they're certainly the prize being vied for by Matthew Berger and Dry Eye - but since actual control of these is never wrested from Mickey, they're more of a narrative finish-line. And it's the absence of this panic, this pursuit, this race against the clock which hobbles Ritchie's latest offering as a very good movie, rather than a truly great one.
The MacGuffin is by no means essential to a great screenplay, but it's a solid start. You'd think an aspiring screenwriter like Fletcher would know that, and you'd expect it from Ritchie. I am loving the ride of The Gentlemen, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the chase...
Ritchie's earlier geezer-features, if you took out anything which could be hidden in the back of a van...
If you're a fan of Ritchie's gangster-oeuvre, yes.
As above.
With the best will in the world, it is not.
With the best will in the world, we very well might.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The Gentlemen Cert: 18 / 113 mins / Dir. Guy Ritchie / Trailer
You can take the boy out of London but you can’t take London out of the boy. And so Guy Ritchie returns to the mockney wide-boy swagger that made his name in the 1990s with The Gentlemen (formerly Toff Guys, formerly Bush), a well-worn knotted yarn of gangsters, guns and the grinning sociopaths of the capital’s underworld.
However. The hurdle Ritchie seems to keep snagging is that each time he waits a decade to make the pilgrimage, he never quite comes back to that same sweet spot. Laden with slightly too much baggage for better or worse from more mainstream projects, the writer/director is hostage to his own better and worst excesses. And so it proves.
CHARMING
In The Gentlemen, minder and enforcer Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) is paid a late-night visit by the charming but weasely private investigator Fletcher (Hugh Grant). The sleuth has been tasked in uncovering the secrets of Raymond’s weed mega-entrepreneur boss Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), but knows he can probably score a larger payday by using this dirt as blackmail leverage instead. With key characters coming in the guises of Michelle Dockery, Henry Golding, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan and Colin Farrell, it’s a star-studded, sprawling and deliberately labyrinthine tale.
And as is so often the case with Ritchie’s gangster oeuvre, this works both for and against it. Our auteur conflates confusion with cleverness and slapstick with style. The screenplay is brimming with the harshest of needless expletives, its pacing all over the place like a first-draft written in a pub. Around a third of the actors do well, another third are fine but mis-cast and the rest of the roles could be played by anybody to similar effect.
Reader, I enjoyed it.
DARKNESS Make no mistake, The Gentlemen is not a return to the heady days of Lock, Stock or Snatch, but if you liked the much-underrated RocknRolla then there is fun to be had in this manor. The weaving plot will reward repeat-viewings, as will the more gaudy punchlines and the performances of an established cast trying their damnedest with a script that reads like a live-action cartoon. This is definitely the film you would expect Guy Ritchie to make.
Back in the day, the director came under fire for being a posh-boy playing dress-up in the East End. As time went on and he demonstrated his weaknesses at mainstream cinema, Guy was called out as an imposter at that party, too.
The Gentlemen is very much where Ritchie finds himself now. Clearly too well-heeled for Chicken Cottage, but looked down upon at Nando’s. Guy Ritchie is the KFC of British film-making. And that’s absolutely fine, London is big enough to embrace all of these outlets and for each to thrive.
The problem is that Guy Ritchie is trying to work all of these restaurants from one menu...
The intensity of Layer Cake with the ADHD of Smokin' Aces.
If you're already aboard The Good Ship Ritchie, hell yes.
It is.
It is not.
That's likely.
There is not
And it's not like there aren't two ideal opportunities.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
It's an odd thing how over the years our favourite films - or at least those we choose to watch the most - aren't always the ones we initially thought the most highly of. I originally scored Rian Johnson's Looper 6/7, despite being a logistical and philosophical masterpiece. The Coen Bros' Inside Llewyn Davis came in one point lower. Yet both have stayed with me ever since, and even made it into by best-of-decade list.
You can take the boy out of London but you can’t take London out of the boy. And so Guy Ritchie returns to the mockney wide-boy swagger that made his name in the 1990s with The Gentlemen (formerly Toff Guys, formerly Bush), a well-worn knotted yarn of gangsters, guns and the grinning sociopaths of the capital’s underworld.