The Gentleman (2020)

Fans of Guy Ritchie must have missed his touch with regards to earlier gangster films as he was drifted off slightly to make bigger flicks. This would be his back to basics film, sort of reminding you the days of  Lock, Stock, Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.

The stars are bigger this time than the earlier flicks that helped to launch the careers of many who will go on to enjoy tremendous success (especially Jason Statham).

The Gentleman may not offer anything fresh, we have seen it all before. The various regional English accents, as well as an American one courtesy of Matthew McConaughey, the tics and the eccentricities of typical English lads and ladies, and most importantly the British sense of humour.

The plot is not as convoluted as one would hope for something Tarantino-esque that one expects from Ritchie, though you might get lost in the flashbacks. The violence is surprisingly plenty sparse…and this is in comparison to Ritchie’s frequent sharing of bucketloads of blood with us. I don’t know, maybe Alladin mellowed him down a bit.

Here you have it, a slimy tabloid journalist, a quick drug dealer and his very smart and tough wife, his consiglieri, and various competitors wanting to take over a huge and secret marijuana plantation (I wonder what Malaysia’s home ministry think of this “inspiring” plot device).

There’s nothing in here that will set the film apart from his usual oeuvre. Bloodshed? Check. Hilarious repartees? Check. Longwinded but entertaining dialogues? Check. So on, so forth. Still, you get a feeling that Ritchie has used up all his arsenals and is just polishing his same old gardening tools and trying to repurpose them.

The characters are interesting, but you are not going to remember them much after the flick is over. Sure, they were entertaining, but who are they? I even can’t quite place McConaughey as to his redeeming quality is concerned. He is involved, but he can’t involve us.

But the film is entertaining where it need be, I suppose. The cast has fun where they should. The script offers some interesting but not surprising twist and turns, as it is wont with Ritchie’s earlier body of work. Still, I felt something lacked…perhaps the originality. Something fresh.

Maybe Ritchie is completing his first circle, going back to the genre that catapulted himself into the consciousness of the filmgoers all over the world (I was in Singapore in 1999, walking into a theatre that allowed R-rated films and was pleasantly shocked and entertained by the audacity and the surprise after surprise offered by Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, still Ritchie’s best in my book).

If you know what to expect from a Guy Ritchie film, you are not in for a surprise. If you do, it’s routine and you just finish your popcorn and forget about it till you see it in cable or something. Ritchie hopefully will be surprising us in his Phase 2.

In short, I suppose I have fallen into that “overgrown the genre” category. I certainly marvelled at Ritchie’s take on Sherlock Holmes, just like how I enjoyed Tarantino’s take on the western, but I felt that I got nothing else to look forward to as far as Ritchie’s bag of tricks is concerned. Maybe he needs to do a biopic or something. You know, the old “reinventing” trick. It kept Clint Eastwood busy into his ninth decade of life, and seventh decade of career….