The Gentlemen (film): Not Ritchie's best, but still really good

Guy Ritchie has a particular directing style that I think I can speak for almost everyone when I say that it is appreciated. This deviates slightly from his "lock stock and snatch" style and I was kind of happy to see that because you do want your favorite directors to mix things up a bit when they are making films.

It does kind of fall into Ritchie's fascination with crime and especially organized crime though.

This movie takes place in the UK but features a couple of American main characters and I think this was done mostly to find a way to get Matthew McConaughey into the cast by any means necessary.

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You likely don't recognize most of the other names in this linup other than Hugh Grant and Colin though and this is another thing that I tend to appreciate about Guy Ritchie. He takes a few really well known names and then mixes them in with relative unknowns and it all just works out so perfectly most of the time.

There were a few aspects of the film that I found a bit annoying and one of them is actually quite critical to how the story is told. Basically, the narrator of the entire story is Hugh Grant who plays the role of an investigative reporter who is attempting to blackmail a crime "family." His character named Fletcher just has kind of an annoying way about him and I tired quite quickly of him being the voice behind the story.

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I think being a snarky, quick-witted, conman was a bit of a deviation from what Hugh Grant normally does and I kind of felt like he was out of his element in this role. This might not be entirely Grant's fault though because according to some sources I read Guy Ritchie only scheduled 5 days for filming all of Grant's footage and you have to keep in mind that although he isn't in really any action scenes, he does basically narrate the entire film. His part in the film is extremely dialogue heavy and his script was apparently 40 pages long and he wasn't given much time to memorize his lines. He is a professional with plenty of experience so one would think that he would be up to the task anyway. Well, he created a cheat sheet for the days of filming but his car was broken into the day before filming his part began and one of the things that was stolen was his cheat sheet.

Hugh would later say that getting this job done was one of the most difficult jobs he has had to do in his entire life and it was very stressful.

Let's move on from that though and focus on the overall story.

It involves a intricately planned underground marijuana processing ring in the UK and the way in which McConaughey's character Mickey Pearson organizes it and gets away with it all is actually pretty inventive. It's so good in fact that I wonder if precisely this sort of organization actually does exist in the UK. It seems like it would work to me. I'm not going to spoil what it is but you'll know when you see it. It is pure genius.

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Much like other Ritchie films, there are a lot of characters involved in the story and if you don't pay careful attention you are quickly going to get lost in what the hell is going on. I particularly liked Colin Farrell's portrayal of "Coach" and his group of MMA underlings who go by the name of "the Toddlers."

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Coach doesn't actually want anything to do with the criminal underworld but his group accidentally gets involved and he has to be the brains that gets them out of trouble. If I had to choose a favorite character in the entire film it would definitely be "Coach." Trust me on this one, you are going to like him as well.

As is typical with many Guy Ritchie films, the story changes direction multiple times as it goes on and while I wouldn't exactly say the ending was completely unpredictable, it does a good job of keeping you guessing as things go by. Keep in mind that you are definitely going to need to pay careful attention during the entire nearly 2 hour runtime otherwise you are going to be totally lost. There are just too many characters in this thing for you to be vacuuming the living room floor while it is going on.

Should I watch it?

I don't think it is necessary for you to enjoy Ritchie's unique style of direction in order to enjoy this film but it probably wouldn't hurt. I really enjoy crime films, especially ones with a comical edge that is so unique to Ritchie's style, so for me this film was outstanding despite the fact that I found Hugh Grant's narration to be a bit annoying. While I wouldn't put this up there as one of Ritchie's best films, I do think it is much better than most of the films that I have watched in the past year or so. It managed to quadruple its budget at the box office, but then again, the fact that this film was made for a mere $22 million is pretty astounding to me. Ritchie must be great friends with these big stars to get them to be in his movies for so little money.

_{Currently, the only legal way to watch this is to buy or rent it on a wide array of providers including Apple, Amazon, Google, and VUDU}