The Gentlemen (2020)

REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER

I really enjoyed Guy Ritchie's THE GENTLEMEN. It's a shaggy dog story, the kind of thing Guy can do so well but hasn't really landed a bullseye with since SNATCH, twenty years ago.

I love his MAN FROM UNCLE - unexpectedly - but I am regarding that as not one of his "own" films, and I'm okay with his SHERLOCK HOLMES pair, but I find them messy, and wilfully and unnecessarily complex, a clockwork mechanism breaking as it unwinds.

THE GENTLEMEN is a return to form. Guy has a way of writing male characters that actors love to get their teeth into. And they do, but often in a low-key way, letting the flow of dialogue, the zing of the camera, and the narrative tension create the sparks.

Matthew McConaughey is laid back and lovely, but not without his customary intensity and drawl, the kind of drug lord you can root for; Charlie Hunnam as his right-hand-man is confident and cool as a cucumber, inscrutable, somehow courteous and civilised behind his wild-man beard; Hugh Grant continues his run of comedy turns (following PADDINGTON 2) with his daring but nervous gay blackmailer, trying to turn a preposterous situation to his own advantage; while Colin Farrell chooses to play it larger than life. He runs a gym and is the "leader" of a gang of kids in their teens and early twenties that he is working to keep on the right side of the tracks. They call themselves 'The Toddlers'.

The Toddlers sound like a street gang from Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS and that's exactly what they are. Kitted out in faux-burberry track-suits, their baseball caps fitted out with go-pros so they can film and upload everything as it happens; they are a fantastic creation, grimed up, inner-city tough... and they steal the film. So much so that I want them to have their own spin-off feature.