The Gentlemen
THE GENTLEMEN - STX
Guy Ritchie returns to his gangster roots with The Gentleman after a series of sizable blockbusters like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and Disney's live-action remake of Aladdin, with the former bombing at the box office and the latter earning relatively weak reviews. Ritchie's The Gentlemen puts the acclaimed director back on track to his not too distant glory days of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, although that is not to say that Ritchie's latest venture does not have a few bumps along the road.
The Gentlemen is no doubt slick in its structure and charm, with Ritchie clearly never having lost that all in important charisma with an energetic and engaging screenplay that feels fresh but venomous in conviction. As per most Ritchie gangster flicks, the director cannot help but play around with structure and in the same vein as Snatch, Ritchie employs a non-cyclical narrative that keeps the viewer on their toes. For the most part, it works, but Ritchie and editor James Herbert go a little too far in terms of twisting and turning the present, never really utilising the unreliable narrator element enough for the film to elevate its twist and turns.
In fact, the film fails to evoke that all-important sense of style as one would expect from a Guy Ritchie venture. Granted, the contextual style is on show for all to see with the costume design Michael Wilkinson, but the aesthetic and production design feels flat and plastic. The score and cinematography by Christopher Benstead and Alan Stewart, respectively, also do not liven up the experience with it not easy to distinguish which attribute is the lesser of two evils.
Thankfully, in the vibrant screenplay from Ritchie, his cast shine through the otherwise forgettable elements that surround them. Lead Charlie Hunnam starts a little shaky as Ray. The actor still lacks a sizeable screen presence and the required on-screen prowess he is still trying to capture is an arm's length away from the desired impact. However, Hunnam slowly but surely comes into his own with a decent effort regarding charm and charisma. Henry Golding is not too dissimilar with a performance that lacks menace or belieability, reinforcing a sense of forced prowess than authentic delinquency the role needs. Nevertheless, his performance is adequate if not slightly underused.
Matthew McConaughey is miscast in a performance that goes for style over substance and its effect before long show as clear as day. It is clear what Ritchie and McConaughey are trying to evoke with the character of Mickey Pearson, but the actor never feels quite comfortable in the characters shoes on screen. Thankfully, the performances of Hugh Grant and Michelle Dockery are here to save the day. Both performances steal the show in their respective scenes and arcs, with the former showcasing his outstanding range that the actor has been rarely afforded since the Wachowski siblings’ Cloud Atlas. Dockery livens up the screen each and every time her character is used but ultimately before long, her role feels forced into proceedings for one vital scene. All else is a bonus, when in fact her character adds a particular dynamic that no other character can but is then whimsically and quite unfortunately sidelined for lesser characters to take shape.
Furthermore, no particular performance feels like it takes centre stage. It would arguably be Hunnam but the film never wants to explore anything other than surface-level depth. In fact, none of the characters have anything more than simple memorable moments than engaging and memorable arcs. Purported as an ensemble of sorts, Ritchie's lastest is perhaps too overstuffed for its own good. There are a dozen more characters here other than stated in the paragraph mentioned above — with Eddie Marsan, Jeremy Strong, rapper Bugzy Malone, Colin Farrell and Eliot Sumner — that are small but integral characters to this enigmatic story. However, these characters are either underwritten or drastically flat, with Eliot Sumner's character one in which has tremendous emotional weight behind it yet is flatlined with Ritchie writing himself into a hole.
THE GENTLEMEN is released January 1st 2020
