The Gentlemen

Aside from a few very marketable films like "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows" and "Aladdin", Guy Ritchie is a writer/director who makes incredibly violent films. That is, incredibly violent films which are also brilliantly constructed and near perfect. While I rarely ever watch violent films, I eagerly look for his next dark British crime film, after seeing his "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch"....and so it's not surprising I'd see "The Gentlemen". And, like these other films, it's near perfect...and a film you ought to see if you have the stomach for this sort of story.

So this leads me to a huge warning. This is NOT a family-friendly film nor one you want to show your mother or Father Jenkins if he stops by for a visit. There's ample cursing, loads of violence, vomit galore, and the story is about bad people...very bad people.

The story is complicated...and goes together like a finely crafted puzzle. It concerns a marijuana czar in Britain, Michael Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) and his desire to sell out and retire to a life of ease and sophistication. However, after making an offer to a rival drug kingpin, suddenly everything goes haywire....folks start dying, farms growing the stuff are hit and an all-out war seems inevitable. There's WAY more to the story than this...but since it's so complex, it's best you just see it to appreciate it.

The bottom line is that Guy Ritchie can write and direct amazing films...and this one is truly amazing and entertaining. Apart from his misguided vanity project, "Swept Away", his output has been impressive and I cannot stress enough what a quality product this film is. My only MINOR quibble is what about the Russian mobster.....what happens with him? This isn't really dealt with in the film and seems a bit like a dangling plot point.

The writing, directing, acting and the general production are all top notch. I have not had this much fun watching a movie in a long time. This will go down as a cult classic, so do not miss it.

It's Guy Ritchies Best since Snatch, it's where he is most playful and comfortable in a film genre he knows well. The Cast is perfectly picked, especially Hugh Grant giving a different but yet so funny performance. Sit back and enjoy 2 hours of a British crime drama, which doesn't take itself too serious If we hadn't had lock stock or snatch then this would possibly looked at in a more classic Ritchie film so don't expect it to be as great as those.

At first I thought it started a little slowly but in hindsight it was just right. A perfect execution of a classic British gangster film epitomised by a charismatic Colin Farrell who stole every scene he entered and left me crying out for a coach spin off. All in all very enjoyable classic guy ritchie film.

This is a typical Guy Ritchie movie, there is a story, it isn't always easy to follow, but style is even more important. Matthew McConaughey is American Mickey Pearson who went to England as a young man on a Rhodes Scholarship. He soon learned that he had a knack for selling drugs to fellow students and that eventually blossomed into his vocation on a very broad scale. Now in middle age has decided to sell his marijuana empire, which included a dozen well-hidden farms, and retire to a leisurely life and maybe have a few rug rats with his beautiful and devoted wife. The price? Just 400 million British Pounds.

As the news of that gets around a number of shady operators want to get their cuts from a number of devious means. So the movie is mainly about that and how Mickey and those loyal to him devise methods to protect him and his investments. The cast includes a number of well-known actors and the roles are uniformly interesting.

This is a good movie for those who appreciate and enjoy this type of British underworld movie, there aren't really any characters who are good people, there are just different degrees of badness.

I watched it at home on BluRay from my public library, my wife skipped, not her kind of movie.