The Gentlemen (2019)
March 25, 2020 11:19 AM - Subscribe

An American expat tries to sell off his highly profitable marijuana empire in London, triggering plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him.
posted by ellieBOA (4 comments total)
 
I caught this in Jan before I moved to Singapore. It was bit of a return to form for Ritchie, in that it took me straight back to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (even more so than Snatch). It's like a carbon copy.

What I found interesting, was that I saw Lock Stock when I was 17 or 18. The intervening 20 years have changed society and myself quite bit: I found Ritchie's masturbatory homophobia and misogyny almost unbearable. His adolescent, edgelord posturing looks so ridiculous in 2019. The near total absence of women in the film and his use of rape as a plot device damning. Grant's homophobic, stereotyped portrayal of a gay man better suited to a Carry On movie.

Yes, it had Ritchie's usual brio and snappy editing, but it's like using amazing tableware to deliver a dodgy kebab.
posted by smoke at 10:53 PM on March 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


I stopped watching thirty minutes in.

I disagree with smoke — I don't think this movie is a return to Lock Stock / Snatch form. It seemed really bad! I loved Snatch but I think if I'd seen this movie twenty years ago I'd hate it.

McConaughey's lugubriousness doesn't work at all IMHO, and that's a big problem, but more importantly ... I just think the story is just not good, and it's not being told well. It's not fast, it's not clever, it's not fun. Kind of like Rocknrolla but even worse.

When it got to the brawl in the drug lab and Colin Farrell's scene interjects was like a chance for maybe the movie to actually start doing something, but it was like juddering and ruined whatever tiny momentum it had built up and I just couldn't take anymore.
posted by fleacircus at 5:56 PM on May 2, 2020


Revisited this at the gym since a Colin Farrell movie is opening this weekend, and...I liked Charlie Hunnam's henchman. That's about it. Guy Ritchie needs to figure out a better way to deal with the terror of mortality.
posted by praemunire at 7:07 PM on October 28, 2022


I decided to watch this as a palette cleanser after watching Bullet Train. Unfortunately,
posted by ckape at 8:57 PM on March 28, 2023


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