Not always is going forward a necessary improvement.
This is proved by Guy Ritchie's latest movie, The Gentlemen, a brilliant coming back of the British director, after the detours from his original imprint and trade mark represented by Aladdin (2019), King Arthur (2017) and in a way also The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015), as well as the diptych of Sherlock Holmes, to his origins, those that brought him success and a distinctive narrative and filmic style centered around the London criminal underworld.
Nobody really believes that the British criminal gangs medley so gracefully cruelty and greed with the irresistibly cool, debonair attitude that denote Guy Ritchie's characters, but it is honestly pleasant to find them again on the screen, it is a like meeting after a long time a distant relative, a bit dissolute but in the end loved and, to a certain extent, even secretly envied without admitting it.
The American Mickey Pearson, well played by Matthew McConaughey, crossed the Atlantic to study at Oxford but soon became a drug kingpin, aptly able to benefit from his contacts with the needy British aristocracy to build a commercial empire for the illegal production and distribution of marijuana on a national scale. Midway upon the journey of his criminal life and happily married to true cockney Rosalinde, he decides to transit to legality and offers to sell all his activities to Jewish entrepreneur Matthew, constantly body-guarded by former Mossad agents. This decision sparks a far-reaching series of effects and subplots that bring onboard various secondary characters, amongst whom Colin Farrell steals the show, that are craftily kept together for the viewers by Fletcher, an investigative journalist working for a tabloid which chief editor holds a grudge against Pearson. Fletcher intends to monetise through blackmail the information he has collected, and those he has only guessed to fill the gaps of what he still doesn't know, and contacts Pearson's top man, Raymond, excellently played by a Charlie Hunnam much more at ease here than as King Arthur. Hugh Grant as Fletcher is in sterling form here, lending an unusual and idiosyncratic charm to a role that deviates, and we should say thankfully and eventually, from the expected characters he has built his successful career on.
Mixing his trademark brisk and sparkling dialogues, Tarantino-like yet unmistakably made in Ritchie, with a crafted and expected British-ness of costumes and settings and a pleasant, defining yet not intrusive soundtrack, The Gentlemen is, to put it simply, a very good movie that gives the viewers what is expected of Guy Ritchie, sprinkling cinephile quotes (Coppola's The Conversation, old film reels) and well-integrated self-quotes (Snatch's pigs and poster of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. amongst others) on an excellent camerawork servicing a tight narrative pace whose thread, mainly for Fletcher's catchy story-telling, is never lost during the film and until its, partially unexpected, ending.
A step back, but towards the quality if his directorial origins, for Guy Ritchie, The Gentlemen will not be remembered for its innovations but it is a solid, well-written, directed and acted, genre movie. Nowadays, not too bad!
The American Mickey Pearson, well played by Matthew McConaughey, crossed the Atlantic to study at Oxford but soon became a drug kingpin, aptly able to benefit from his contacts with the needy British aristocracy to build a commercial empire for the illegal production and distribution of marijuana on a national scale. Midway upon the journey of his criminal life and happily married to true cockney Rosalinde, he decides to transit to legality and offers to sell all his activities to Jewish entrepreneur Matthew, constantly body-guarded by former Mossad agents. This decision sparks a far-reaching series of effects and subplots that bring onboard various secondary characters, amongst whom Colin Farrell steals the show, that are craftily kept together for the viewers by Fletcher, an investigative journalist working for a tabloid which chief editor holds a grudge against Pearson. Fletcher intends to monetise through blackmail the information he has collected, and those he has only guessed to fill the gaps of what he still doesn't know, and contacts Pearson's top man, Raymond, excellently played by a Charlie Hunnam much more at ease here than as King Arthur. Hugh Grant as Fletcher is in sterling form here, lending an unusual and idiosyncratic charm to a role that deviates, and we should say thankfully and eventually, from the expected characters he has built his successful career on.
Mixing his trademark brisk and sparkling dialogues, Tarantino-like yet unmistakably made in Ritchie, with a crafted and expected British-ness of costumes and settings and a pleasant, defining yet not intrusive soundtrack, The Gentlemen is, to put it simply, a very good movie that gives the viewers what is expected of Guy Ritchie, sprinkling cinephile quotes (Coppola's The Conversation, old film reels) and well-integrated self-quotes (Snatch's pigs and poster of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. amongst others) on an excellent camerawork servicing a tight narrative pace whose thread, mainly for Fletcher's catchy story-telling, is never lost during the film and until its, partially unexpected, ending.
A step back, but towards the quality if his directorial origins, for Guy Ritchie, The Gentlemen will not be remembered for its innovations but it is a solid, well-written, directed and acted, genre movie. Nowadays, not too bad!