Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is Great Britain’s biggest grower and distributor of illegal cannabis. His operation is decentralized with his growing operation scattered to multiple underground bunkers on the estates of British aristocracy. Mickey helps the Lords, Ladies and such maintain their properties with payments for the use of their land. He has a small army of loyal, well paid workers, that cultivate the crop, package it and distribute it throughout the UK and parts of mainland Europe. Mickey and his wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery) live a lavish lifestyle while keeping themselves off the radar. Mickey, an American that came to Britain as a Rhodes Scholar and never left, ruthlessly worked his way up through Britain’s underworld to become the king of weed. Now middle aged, Mickey is looking to get out of the racket and enjoy his life without the hassles of always looking for his shoulder for the next threat to his empire. Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong) is an American billionaire with a dark side. He approaches Mickey about selling his business. Mickey quotes a price of $400 million British pounds as his price and shows Matthew around one of his grow operations, explaining how it all works. Mickey is also approached by a Chinese gangster named Dry Eye (Henry Golding) who works for Lord George (Tom Wu), offering to buy his business. Mickey refuses the offer and insults Dry Eye, starting a turf war. Fletcher (Huge Grant), a private investigator, is waiting for Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) in his home. Raymond is Mickey’s right-hand man. Fletcher has information he wants to sell to Mickey for $20 million pounds, or he will sell it to tabloid publisher Big Dave (Eddie Marsan) for $150,000 pounds. Because Big Dave felt humiliated by Mickey when he refused to shake his hand at a cocktail party in front of a high society crowd, Dave hired Fletcher to dig up all the dirt on Mickey for a front-page story. Meanwhile, one of Mickey’s grow sites is robbed by a group of young fighters trained by Coach (Colin Farrell). The young men filmed their crime, created a rap song to go with it, and posted it to YouTube. All these complications are making Mickey’s life much more complicated just as he was on the edge of retiring. That makes Mickey very angry.
Director Guy Ritchie is known for his affinity for gritty British crime stories. “Snatch,” “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Revolver” and “RocknRolla” all center on violent men and the lengths they go to protecting their territory and their lives. While the quality of his films, both crime/action and other genres, varies widely, Ritchie has a visual flair that sometimes gets in the way of the story he’s trying to tell. At the beginning of “The Gentlemen,” I was afraid Ritchie was going to overwhelm his tale of turf wars, deception and revenge with lots of camera tricks and visual winks to the audience of how creative and smart he is. Fortunately, he gets those out of his system quickly and the film settles into a twisty and enjoyable crime caper.
First things first: The script is filled with the use of the word C**T (See You Next Tuesday). In Britain and Australia, that word doesn’t have the same nuclear bomb effect of bring a room to a halt that it does here, and it is never used to refer to a female character. It is always a man saying to or about another man. Now that I’ve warned you about that, let’s move on.
“The Gentlemen” is constantly playing against the stereotype of a criminal. Mickey, Raymond, Matthew and most of the cast are impeccably dressed. Even the thugs usually look well put together in a more casual style. They only really get down and dirty in brief, graphic moments of violence that is usually bloody. McConaughey is especially good at speaking softly while filling his words with incredible menace. Mickey has done horrible things in his life to get to the position he is now. He is capable of mind-numbing violence, but he would rather make you mess yourself with quiet words that carry implied or actual threats. Once, I heard someone say, “The first person that yells in an argument has lost that argument.” Mickey lives by that credo and those in his sphere best believe he means what he says.
The messiest character in the film is Hugh Grant’s Fletcher. Grant is also playing against what most of us think as his type: The suave and mild-mannered British gentleman with the halting speech pattern. Fletcher is a PI that doesn’t mind spending all night in a car, watching his target and taking pictures of their indiscretions. Wearing a cheap-looking leather coat and his greasy hair swept back on his head, Fletcher wouldn’t look out of place in a charity soup kitchen line. He speaks with a rough-around-the-edges accent and implies he’s attracted to Charlie Hunnam’s Raymond. Whether his flirtations are an attempt to get on Raymond’s nerves or he’s actually gay/bi is not cleared up. My belief is he’s doing it to knock Raymond off balance as a negotiation tactic. It seems like a bad idea to sarcastically flirt with a gangster, but Fletcher is full of bad ideas.
Grant’s Fletcher is perhaps the most interesting character in the film as he’s an outsider. His behavior suggests he’s a wannabe criminal. Someone that has observed for so long, and perhaps done mildly illegal things for his job, he feels like he’s “one of the boys.” We’ve all known someone, or been someone, that was on the fringe of a group. This person is lonely and looking to surround himself with people he admires. He may not be as experienced or accomplished as the group but believes he has seen enough to be able to mix and mingle with the “in crowd.” Fletcher is this lonely person orbiting the cool kids. He doesn’t realize what shark-infested waters he’s waded into.
The story turns criminals into heroes, plus criminals into villains. We are less subtly guided into rooting for Mickey, Raymond and Rosalind, and to a point, Fletcher. None of these people are innocent and most of them have blood on their hands. Perhaps it’s best said by Mickey when he’s talking to the boss of the Chinese gang. Lord George deals in heroin. Mickey only sells weed and tells Lord George weed hasn’t killed anyone while heroin is deadly. Even Mickey has a line he won’t cross which, I guess, makes him the more moral character of the two. It’s an emotional conflict that is easy to sort out when people as attractive as McConaughey, Hunnam and Dockery are the ones we’re supposed to support.
“The Gentlemen” is rated R for violence, language throughout, sexual references and drug content. Lots of shooting, one person falls out of a high rise building and we see his body after it hits the ground, one person is run over by a train, two people are shot in the middle of the forehead and both take a few seconds to fall, a woman is shown being roughed up prior to an attempted rape, a character dies of a drug overdose, we see a couple of bodies in freezers, and see a person projectile vomit a couple of times. Sexual references are mostly from Fletcher towards Raymond. The film shows lots of people smoking weed as well as a syringe of heroin being prepared. Foul language is common throughout.
If you’re looking for a film with a deep, philosophical meaning, “The Gentlemen” isn’t it. It’s a glorification of illegal drugs as the next growth business for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. It is also a stylish thriller with a twisty tale of wealth, greed, jealousy, revenge and excess. While the action is set in the UK, it’s kind of the American Dream: Small town boy goes to the big city and gets rich. He also kills some people along the way, but that’s the price of success.
“The Gentlemen” gets four guitars out of five.
February’s movie review is “
Fantasy Island
.”
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