The Gentlemen *** (2020, Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding) – Movie Review

Writer-director Guy Ritchie’s nasty, bad karma action crime thriller The Gentlemen (2020) is extremely slick and thoroughly entertaining, though it is a highly disreputable piece of work. It’s one of those movies where you are entertained for two hours but then are glad to get out of the cinema and breath some fresh air afterwards, and feel like an immediate shower to wash it off.

Matthew McConaughey stars as American expat crook Mickey Pearson, who has built a fancy marijuana empire in London. When the word spreads that he’s planning to retire, the rats come out of the woodwork, bringing him up against the Chinese, the Russians, a boxing coach and his boys, a dodgy newspaper editor, and a gay cannabis king criminal.

There are plenty of really bad attitudes as well as caustic dry Brit wit to be found in an amusing movie, though it is hardly ever actually laugh-out-loud funny. It is very Nineties, and very Tarantino-esque. It never flags, never gets boring, and keeps pacing along, full of the swagger and confidence of its own convictions. But let’s say loudly and clearly that this is a nasty, unpleasant film to have around, with a very high and disgusting quota of smug racism, sexism and homophobia. Entertaining though it is, it is debased entertainment.

Ritchie has called in a group of actors who are up for it, some of them slightly out of their comfort zone. McConaughey is excellent, on commanding form, and so are Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, and Henry Golding, all of them with plenty of showy stuff to do.

Prepare for an avalanche of foul language. If you cut the C and F words out of the script, the film would run about half its current length. There is a dark and dangerous atmosphere, and some unpleasant violence, though not as extreme as in the finale of One Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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