In the halcyon days of 1998, I never actually saw Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels in the cinema. I only got round to watching it on DVD sometime later. Remember those things, DVDs? It was so fresh and vibrant, the dialogue popped off the screen, smart wit, clever wordplay, it felt so organic next to the Hollywood offerings that love defined heroes and villains. Its loose morality made everything feel real.
Then I actually watched Snatch at the cinema. Again, the stylised violence and non-stop loquacious verbiage of the characters felt new and different. The fast cuts and smooth transitions, which are now commonplace, felt so unique. In both films there were brutal murders, someone was getting their head smashed in with a car door, another person was shot multiple times and didn’t die and it was played for laughs. It was a different time and everything felt so light.
Now, 19 years later and director Guy Ritchie is back in that dirty, grimy British underworld that shot him to superstardom and now has him making remakes of Disney cartoons. What a world we live in.
The Gentlemen revolves around Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughy, are we still in the McConaissance?) an American living in England, who has a skill for making the best weed in town, and a penchant for enforcing his decisions are followed. Now, years after being in the drug game he wants to get out and sell to a big drug dealer, Matthew (Jeremy Strong) from the US. It’s a typical story of our time, a young hot upstart disrupts an industry with novel and innovative ideas and then sells out to the behemoth and sips tropical drinks on the beach till they grow old.
As with all of these three films in the Cockney Trilogy, there are many moving parts that all have their own unique feel and flavour. Hugh Grant fantastically revels in playing Fletcher, an appalling reporter that is just trying to get some of the action by convincing Mickey’s consigliere Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) that its worth more to Mickey to pay him than give the information to his employer, an evil media mogul played by Eddie Marsan that wants to get back at Mickey for feeling slighted.
Henry Golding plays Dry Eye – never figured out why he got this nickname – who is an upstart gangster that is trying to secure more territory. The always great -and in my opinion viciously underrated -Colin Farrell as Coach, who trains some lads in combat sports to keep them off the street. There are Lords and Ladies, chop shops, gunfights, viral videos, things involving pigs that is the stuff of nightmares.
The Gentlemen is Ritchie back to his classic flare and bombacity. Yet it all feels bigger and darker. Lock, Stock was a very intimate film, it felt like it stayed in one area, Snatch crossed the pond but it still felt grounded in the British underworld. The Gentlemen with an American lead makes it feel more Hollywood and even though the film still has the razor-sharp wit it feels darker, more jaded than the excitement and flair of his previous films.
Maybe it’s me that has grown more cynical. The previous films released when I was still in high school and the world had so much opportunity, so many things to explore and find out and now we live in a post-truth world where decency is being eroded by tribalism. Lies and deceit are the modus operandi of the world. Maybe this film is the same as the other two but my reaction to is more telling about me than about the film?
Even with the darker tone, the film still works on many many levels. If you agree with me that the world is a different place than it was in the early 2000s then do yourself a favour and take some people you care about to a dark room and enjoy the hell out of this film. You won’t regret it, and you will wonder what went on with that pig.
Dec 18, 2019
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe