The Gentlemen: Exploring the Pros and Cons of Guy Ritchie

I am not what you’d call a Guy Ritchie fan. I loved his first two films, the titles of which I probably don’t need to name but will for the uninitiated. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was a hugely exciting debut, establishing Ritchie as a writer/director with a distinctive voice and style, and Snatch improved upon it with a better cast, stronger writing and a more assured filmmaker at the helm. It might also feature my favorite Brad Pitt performance to date, top three with 12 Monkeys and Burn After Reading at least. Don’t make me choose. However, I have something to confess, something that disturbs me to no end, something I’ve never told another living soul: I have not seen every movie ever made. Guy Ritchie has made eleven feature films, and I have seen four of them. That’s not even half! If you’re reading this as a fan who’s stuck with Guy Ritchie throughout the years, in sickness and in health, I probably don’t have a massive amount of credibility at this point, but I do have an explanation: instead of watching King Arthur or Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows or Aladdin I was probably using that time to watch a better movie, one that I’d actually like. There, that’s the kind of inoffensive, personable statement that no hardcore Guy Ritchie fan could ever object to. Friends?

Based on my experience with late 90s/early 2000s angry IMDB message board writing, just about every “fan” will have had a certain moment where they fell out of love with Guy Ritchie’s work. For those who saw it, not many considering how badly it bombed, it was probably Swept Away: Ritchie’s notorious collaboration with ex-wife Madonna. I didn’t see that film because I was 12 at the time, and the idea of watching Madonna (an “actress” of extremely limited range) and a surly Italian man trapped together on a deserted island screaming at each other until they fell in love didn’t appeal to me at the time. Or now. That being said, I understand why Ritchie would want to make such an uncharacteristic film. Lock, Stock made a major impression when it came out and Snatch was also well received, but even back then people were calling out Ritchie for having limited range. His movies were clever, witty and violent, with kinetic editing and lots of colorful characters with names like Bacon, Soap, Barry the Baptist, Turkish, Bullet Tooth Tony, Frankie Four Fingers and Gary. That was all well and good, but was he just going to do the same thing every time? His films were fun, but they were also shallow. You liked his characters, but you didn’t care about them. So, Guy Ritchie diversified, first with Swept Away (and we all know how that went) and then with Revolver. For me, that film was the tipping point.

Sure, Revolver was still a violent crime movie, but it was different. Humor was much less of a focus, and as such the funny names were more subdued this time: Sorter, Lord John, French Paul, and Dorothy Macha, which isn’t a weird name unless you know that Ray Liotta played him. What really set Revolver apart was that Ritchie was making it after accusations of being derivative and a third film that was torn to shreds by critics. He needed to prove that he could branch out (while not alienating everyone) and that he was capable of depth as a writer. His solution to this was to make another crime movie, the thing he was actually good at, but to make it unbearably pretentious to compensate. As such, Revolver’s dialogue goes on and on about philosophy, the ego, numerology and quantum mechanics. Ritchie’s writing was heavily influenced by Kabbalah, Madonna’s religion of choice. We don’t know if Ritchie was ever an actual member of this religion, but we do know that he’s never mentioned it again. Regardless, Revolver is a mess. It’s the kind of movie that begs to be debated. Audiences are meant to suss out his meaning, watch the film closely multiple times to pick up on all the little clues and come up with their own interpretations; and under the right conditions that kind of thing can be fun. That’s half the reason I love Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks. But this movie is so up it’s own ass that it is a chore to watch. Ritchie made the brilliant decision to give some of the film’s most complex speeches to Andre 3000 who, despite being one of the greatest rappers around, is not an actor. Worst of all, the film makes you look at the butt of blue, naked Ray Liotta, unless that was just a nightmare I had. No thanks.

Of course, Ritchie followed up Revolver with RocknRolla, his comeback, and despite being accused of being derivative again and having limited range again it restored Ritchie’s reputation enough that he could go on to make big budget studio pictures. But I didn’t see RocknRolla, or any of Ritchie’s subsequent movies. Not until The Gentlemen that is. With a cast like that and some really fun trailers Ritchie became increasingly difficult to ignore, and so I gave in. I am pleased to say, after all these years, that The Gentlemen is the same old thing. It’s violent, it’s witty, the editing is fast and showy… a little disappointing on the funny names front though. But seriously, there’s nothing wrong with an artist doing what they do best. Why would you want them not to, to prove a point? The Gentlemen is true to Ritchie’s unique voice, and watching it again I was happy to be reminded of how distinctive his dialogue is. Now and then his words can be hard to follow because they’re so flowery, so laden with rhyming slang and metaphor, and delivered so quickly. But part of the fun of watching a Ritchie movie is getting on his wavelength. You know how the best way to learn Spanish to go to Mexico and stay there until you can successfully ask somebody where the library is? Ritchie’s films are much the same way. It’s rough going at first but then you get acclimated and then you can follow him down the many winding paths he wants to show you. It’s a genuinely fun experience.

Aside from Ritchie’s dialogue, The Gentlemen’s greatest asset might be its cast. The least surprising turn here is that of Matthew McConaughey. We all know he’s a great actor at this point (if you don’t then where have you been for the last decade?), and he’s very solid here. Also solid is MIchelle Dockery as his wife, who unfortunately doesn’t get much to do. Jeremy Strong gets a couple of moments to shine, but in typical Ritchie fashion his character doesn’t have much complexity. The same goes for the role filled by Colin Farrell, a very underrated actor who does typically strong work here. However, he doesn’t have an opportunity to be a highlight because his character is boring. There were the makings of an interesting role there, absolutely, but he’s not developed enough for any of it to hit home, and that’s a shame. However, there are two actors here who have interesting roles and deliver memorable performances, and they’re the main reasons to see The Gentlemen.

The first is Charlie Hunnam, who I first saw in Pacific Rim and subsequently dismissed as another Jai Courtney or Sam Worthington: an actor who depends on their looks and masculine energy to make up for their boring personality. Both of those actors have gone on to do more interesting work since, and Hunnam is no different, which just goes to show that putting people into boxes is dumb. He first caught my attention in The Lost City of Z, but here he’s even better. (And yes, I know he’s probably good on Sons of Anarchy, but I haven’t seen it. Noticing a trend?) His take on the role is subtle, but he manages to convey a great deal. You fully buy into his devotion to McConaughey’s character Mickey, and their friendship humanizes both men. However, there’s also something unnerving about Hunnam’s Raymond. He doesn’t commit a lot of violent acts in the movie, if any, and yet he projects this energy that makes him seem very capable of cruelty. Part of the tension of the film is waiting to see if he’ll snap and begin systematically murdering everyone who’s not Mickey or his wife. Maybe in the sequel.

The other great performance, and the highlight of the entire film, is Hugh Grant as Fletcher. Now, I know that Hugh Grant is in the midst of a grand comeback, and I’m rooting for him. I do like him as a person, based largely on this humble GQ “iconic characters” interview where he calls himself out for playing the same role over and over again between the years of 1994 and 2003. However, I haven’t seen Florence Foster Jenkins or Paddington 2 or A Very English Scandal (I haven’t seen any movies, we’ve established this), so up until this point I’ve just had to take people’s word for it. And wow, if this is how good he’s been in those other films as well then I might need to give them a watch. Grant is transformative here. He talks differently, he moves differently, he doesn’t even look like himself, and none of it is showy. He’s not drenched in prosthetics or doing some weird voice or acting all twitchy. He just feels like a different person, and it’s so impressive.

I don’t like to spend much time on plot descriptions, but if you haven’t seen The Gentlemen I’ll give you a short one for context: Mickey is a major weed dealer in England who’s looking to retire. He considers selling his business to Matthew, which involves revealing the locations of his hidden grow houses. A Chinese gang also wants to buy but Mickey doesn’t want to do business with them because they sell hard drugs, which he’s against. One of the members of this gang, Dry Eye, threatens Mickey that he’d better sell the business to them and not Matthew, but Mickey tells him to fuck off. Then, one of Mickey’s grow houses gets raided, not by Matthew or Dry Eye but a seemingly unrelated gang who operates under the tutelage of Colin Farrell’s Coach. What’s going on? Who’s screwing who? Who will be savagely murdered by the time the story comes to a close?

This plot is complicated by the fact that we have an unreliable narrator. Virtually the entire story is told to us by Fletcher, a reporter, but while he was watching from the sidelines he wasn’t there for all of the film’s events. Rather than being some omniscient narrator, Fletcher is established to have filled in the blanks himself, turning the whole story into a screenplay which he uses to blackmail Raymond. This is all a bit meta, with Fletcher telling us how he’d film the story (a style which Ritchie then adopts) and eventually trying to sell the script to Miramax (the company which distributed The Gentlemen). This means that some of the events here are invented or embellished while others are accurate, and we don’t know which is which. While this is a neat idea, and it does give the film more character, I wish that Ritchie had done more with it. It’s not in Raymond’s character to contradict Fletcher, as that would be supplying him with extra ammunition, but we could have still seen the events from Raymond’s perspective as flashbacks. You even have a setup for this in the movie: Fletcher says how he’d film his version, so when you’re showing Raymond’s memories you could simply shoot it a different way. Maybe use a different aspect ratio or distinctive color correction. This would allow us to contrast Fletcher’s exaggerations with the way it really went down, which might have been fun. Then again, maybe the film is already complex enough.

My main issue with the Gentlemen is not the plotting, which ranges from adequate to engaging. It’s certainly not the cast, many of whom are excellent. And it’s not Ritchie’s dialogue, as knotty as it can sometimes be, or his energetic direction. No, my only serious problem with The Gentlemen is that it’s racist. If you just rolled your eyes at the idea of some SJW over-analyzing a harmless piece of entertainment and giving it an F because it didn’t have enough representation for Samoans or something then #1 you’re kind of an asshole and #2 I’m not doing that. You don’t have to dig deep to find the racism in this movie, it’s right there on the surface. And I’m not talking about the fact that several of the film’s main characters make racist jokes. Lots of people make racist jokes, and if that’s part of the character you’re creating then I have no issue with that. If every character was likable all the time movies would get real boring real fast. No, the racism in The Gentleman is more layered than that. It’s so deeply entrenched in the film’s plotting and characters that I doubt Ritchie was even aware of it. It feels like the result of feelings buried in his subconscious, not intentional commentary. That being said, it is most certainly there.

I want to break this down, and that’s going to include spoilers, so if you want to avoid that just skip to the final paragraph, or go see the movie and come back. I’m more than willing to wait. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s break down our cast and see if we notice any trends:

PROTAGONISTS

Mickey (Matthew McConaughey): White guy from America living in England. Has a wife so he’s into the ladies, at least to some extent. No religion specified. Ends up getting away scot-free with everything he wants.

Rosalind (Michelle Dockery): White woman from England. Married to Mickey so she’s into guys, at least to some extent. No religion specified. Ends up getting away scot-free with everything she wants.

Raymond (Charlie Hunnam): White guy from England. Sexuality not specified, though he does rebuff Hugh Grant’s advances. No religion specified. Ends the film alive and in no obvious danger.

Coach (Colin Farrell): White guy from England with an Irish accent. Sexuality and religion not specified. Ends up safe, not owing anything to anyone. Also, he defends a guy working out in his gym who calls another boxer a “black cunt,” saying that he is black and he is a cunt so therefore the insult is not racist.

ANTAGONISTS

Dry Eye (Henry Golding): Chinese gangster who speaks with an English accent. Religion not specified, but probably attracted to women since he attempts to assault Rosalind in one baffling scene. Is called a “dragon” by Mickey while he’s alive, and a “chinaman” after he’s dead. Mickey also makes fun of his accent (an accent he doesn’t even have by the way), replacing his “r’s” with “l’s”. Ends up dead in a freezer.

Phuc (Jason Wong) An associate of Dry Eye. Coach and Raymond make fun of him for having a name that sounds like “fuck.” That’s his big scene. Killed accidentally during an escape attempt (that’s what Wikipedia says, but honestly I don’t remember).

Matthew (Jeremy Strong): The man attempting to buy Michael’s weed business. No sexuality specified, but he is Jewish which is mentioned a lot. He’s portrayed as greedy/stingy, shifty and manipulative, and is entirely focused on money to the point of absurdity. He ends up locked in the freezer with Dry Eye, paying McConaughey his money and cutting “a pound of flesh” off of his body in possible reference to Shylock, Shakespeare’s oft debated Jewish villain/antihero from The Merchant of Venice.

Fletcher (Hugh Grant): A white guy from England who is attempting to blackmail Michael. No religion specified but Fletcher is clearly gay, as is illustrated by the increasingly aggressive way that he flirts with Raymond. Ends up losing everything he worked for but escapes, only to later be caught by Raymond and probably killed.

As you can see, the whiter and straighter you are in this universe the more likely you are to be rewarded, or even to survive. And while the straight white people also commit terrible acts, like murder for example, they are more upstanding and honorable about it. They have rules. They are also smarter, more competent and less impulsive. I didn’t realize the extent of this problem until I discussed the film with my friend, but once you let this genie out of the bottle you’re never getting it back in. I’ll never be able to watch this movie again without pondering this element, and that’s a shame. The film is very entertaining, and there’s plenty about it that I liked or even loved, but now I can’t help but look back at it as that racist movie Guy Ritchie made. It’s baffling to me that so many talented people spent months filming this script, and not one of them took Ritchie aside and said “hey, you have a problem here. You might need to do another draft.” Maybe they did and Ritchie just ignored them. After all, he knows that he’s not racist.

It’s the same debate people have about Tarantino. The guy keeps using the n-word over and over in his scripts, and he keeps justifying it by saying “this is how my characters would talk” or, in the case of Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, “this is how everybody talked back then.” Often that justification seems flimsy, but for some stories it’s reasonable enough. But then you get to Tarantino’s cameo in Pulp Fiction, a scene in which he himself says the n-word over and over, and his argument gets a little muddier. What’s this guy’s justification for saying it? Is this character meant to be racist? If so, why is there a black man standing in the room with him not asking him to cut it the fuck out? What is going through Jules’ head at that moment? Now, consider a movie like Taxi Driver. We see its events from the perspective of Travis Bickle, who is a racist. However, we’re not supposed to find his racism funny or endearing. It is never portrayed in a slightly positive light, nor is he demonized for it. We simply see the world the way he does and draw our own conclusions. Filmmaking like that is provocative, risky in all the right ways, essential even. It confronts the viewer and makes them pick a side. The racism in The Gentlemen is not confrontational. It doesn’t make you think. It’s casual, tossed off in witty exchanges. Some of it does originate from the characters, but some of it clearly comes from the writer as well, and that’s troubling.

All that being said, The Gentlemen is a strong film, with plenty to recommend. Hugh Grant’s performance is worth the price of admission alone, and McConaughey, Hunnam and Farrell are very good as well. Most of the dialogue is sharp and fun, and the movie is wonderfully paced. It has all the makings of a fun night out, and I do not regret giving it my time. That being said, if I’d known going in that the movie was racist would I have paid to support it? Would I have chosen to watch it at all? Honestly, I feel like I would have, for one simple reason: I like to make up my own mind. If I’m interested in a film that somebody says is problematic I don’t take their word for it and reject it outright, I see it for myself and decide whether or not I agree. So now I’m in an awkward position. I think you should watch this movie and decide whether or not I’m right, not just blindly accept what I’m telling you. At the same time I don’t want to recommend that you go out and support a film that I personally found to be prejudiced. So I’ll just say this: do as you will. If you can watch it without paying then by all means do so. Download it, pirate it, borrow it from a friend… see if you agree with me. And if you do, maybe skip the next Guy Ritchie movie. I personally am going to go back to what I’ve been doing for the past 18 years: ignoring him. It’s been easy so far, and it’ll be even easier now.