Guy Ritchie's 'Gentlemen' Is Starting 2020 Off With A Bang
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding, Hugh Grant and Jeremy Strong
R
Action
Run time: 1 hr, 53 min
Directed by Guy Ritchie
In theaters January 24, 2020
The last two months or so have been a ping pong game of going between truly bad movies and stellar award films. It’s almost been exhausting. Guy Ritchie has rescued us with a truly fun movie. One that I’d recommend to just about anyone who just wants to enjoy two hours at the movie theater. It’s aesthetically gorgeous, hilariously written and extremely unique. In a world of remakes, sequels and adaptations, a more unique story stands out among the crowd. And somehow, Ritchie makes a story involving Matthew McConaughey and weed something you haven’t seen before.
McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, a brilliant American who has created a marijuana empire hidden almost in plain sight. His one weakness? His beautiful badass of a wife (Michelle Dockery). We’re told the story of what happens when he tries to get out of the game and retire on the hundreds of millions selling his empire should get him. Naturally, it doesn’t quite go as planned, and there’s far more layers to the story than we are told (via a PI named Fletcher played by an almost unrecognizable Hugh Grant). Henry Golding, Colin Farrell and Charlie Hunnam all weave in and out of the story - some more so than others.
I had some high-ish expectations going into this because The Man from UNCLE is one of my favorite movies, and one I think about at least once a week. This was the perfect spiritual sequel to it. It had the same smart humor that I’ve related to Guy Ritchie films, and reinforced my belief that well-written dialogue may even be more important than the plot. Thankfully, this movie didn’t fall short there either. A few times I thought I could predict exactly how everything would play out and how everyone was fitting together, but there were even more levels to the development that I didn’t see coming.
One of the things that impressed me most was the use of the frame narrative within this movie. I normally roll my eyes at being told a story so directly, whether via a book a character is reading or just relating a tale to someone else, but this one worked exceedingly well. The narration through a conversation between Hunnam and Grant’s characters added some much needed levity and sass to what could have been a darker, mob fight kind of film. With the personalities injected into the story, you’re able to care more about these people whose lives we are just thrown into. One of the other things that stood out to me? A cardigan that Hunnam wears that is a worthy successor to Chris Evans’ white sweater he wore in Knives Out.