So, I’ve bought myself an Odeon Limitless membership. I like films and I used to like writing (having not done so for many years), so I’ve decided to write about the films I watch.
The first film I watched with my new membership was Guy Ritchie’s first gangster film in 11 years, the Gentlemen. It was worth the wait. It’s not a film to convert anyone to become a Guy Ritchie fan, but if you’re a fan of his work already, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this film.
It was a little bit of a slow burner to start. The opening scene sees Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), who sounds remarkably like Matthew McConaughey, order a pint and a pickled egg. That was pretty tough to get on board with. Fortunately he gets shot in the head (or does he?) soon after the pickled egg arrived, which seemed fair enough.
One thing that made me smile early on in the film was seeing Manchester rapper Bugzy Malone’s name appear in the opening credits. I’m a fan of his music and knew that in his song M.E.N. 2 he had said: “I told my agent tell Guy Ritchie he don’t need to pay me, as I was watching Snatch that’s my all time favourite gangster movie.”Having not seen him promoting this fact on his social media channels, I felt immediately happy for him and was excited to see how big the part was. I realise in hindsight that the lyric will have been written whilst filming was taking place, and also saw that he had been promoting the appearance and lyrics, via his social media channels.
I was aware from watching the Graham Norton show that Hugh Grant would not be playing his typical semi-aloof, bumbling Englishman and instead would be portraying a camp, greedy, east-end private investigator. What I didn’t realise was that for the first half of the film, it would be Grant somewhat unreliably narrating the string of events that had led to the current situation, to Charlie Hunnam’s character, Ray, as he attempts to blackmail the film’s drug-dealing gangsters. I was initially disappointed with this being used as a story-telling device (Grant quite literally telling the story), but fortunately it doesn’t last for the whole film, there are twists to come and some of the interchanges between Hunnam and Grant make it worth it.
Colin Farrell was at his comedic best as ‘Coach’, who is asked to take on increasingly difficult tasks in order to repay his ‘debt’ after his team of amateur boxers (referring to themselves as the ‘Toddlers’ gang), fought Pearson’s guards and raided his marijuana from an underground vault. Bugzy Malone (Ernie) is the gang leader who posted a ‘fight porn’/rap music video of the raid to YouTube, which initially alerted Pearson to what had happened. For those that are wondering (probably just me), the song has unfortunately not been released, yet. Ritchie has received some criticism for his casual use of racism, but in one humorous exchange, Coach and Ernie discuss what is and isn’t racist.
I’ll try not to give any more spoilers now. The inventive language, one liners and unnecessarily convoluted sentences feel like some kind of cross between Shakespeare and Kubrick’s The Clockwork Orange. You could watch it just for the action; you could watch it just for the conversation, but if you like Guy Ritchie gangster films, you just have to watch it. To be fair, you probably already have.
ClingFilm 