The Gentlemen (2019)

“The Gentlemen” (2019) is Guy Ritchie’s most recent cinema masterpiece, and it is fantastic.

It started with the main character, Michael (Matthew McConaughey), getting shot in the back of the head.
From there, we were introduced to Ray (Charlie Hunnam), Michael’s luckless bodyguard, and Fletcher (Hugh Grant), a journalist with a good nose for a great story.
Fletcher threatened Ray that he would spill the beans on Michael’s entire marijuana empire, but he would keep it secret for a price. Of course, if Ray didn’t cough up the cash, Fletcher would have no choice but to “leak” the story to the equally slimy Editor in Chief of a big-time London newspaper, throwing the remains of Ray’s life down the drain.

So Fletcher told the story, setting it up to Ray as if he were pitching a movie, going as far as to specify the type of film and camera he wanted Ray (and by extension, the audience) to “watch” his version of events unfold through, even going as far as to clarify that analogue film should be used so there could be grain.
(Side note: I have no idea if the actual movie was filmed with the hardware that Fletcher described, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t)
He skipped back in time to when Michael - a poor American from an unspecified trailerpark - earned himself an all-expense-paid trip to Oxford, where he learned his true calling: selling drugs.
From there he started an empire with countless secret weed gardens speckled across the U.K. and found himself a femme fatale wife, Rosalind (Michelle Dockery).

But Michael was growing tired of his illicit drug kingdom and wanted a chance to settle down with his ill-gotten gains and have a good life.
The news of his impending retirement traveled fast, earning him the attention of two other large-scale weed enthusiasts, who obviously wanted his piece of the market share without the cost of buying in…

And then you need to go watch it yourself, because like “Knives Out” (2019), there were so many damn good details in this that if I keep going and try to explain any more about the plot to you, I’m afraid I’ll give it away. There was a great twist and a perfectly framed red herring. Until the last scene, it still wasn’t clear who the antagonists and protagonists were, as we couldn’t quite keep tabs on which direction the plot was going to go.
It wasn’t “twisty-turning-confusing” - it was just magnificently good at misdirection. There were so many times when a character would say something, or do something, that made me think they had the upper hand, only for the narrative to show what they were doing from another angle, making it clear just what they were up to and how much it would or wouldn’t work in their favor.

Even as I write this review hours later and think back to the scenes and plot, I’m putting together more and more pieces of what happened and who was playing who.
Wow.

The cast also included Coach (Colin Farrell) and Dry Eye (Henry Golding), a boxing coach and a competing drug dealer, respectively.
Then there was Matthew (Jeremy Strong), Michael’s pick for a “corporate merger” of sorts and the one weak-link in this movie. As I’ve never seen Jeremy Strong in anything before, I couldn’t tell if his character was so weird he seemed poorly acted, or if Strong is actually a terrible actor. As there was no thematic reasoning for Matthew to come across as a drama school dropout, I have to assume that Strong is just really bad and probably shouldn’t get hired for another role in the future.
Like watching Chris Evans play an asshole in “Knives Out,” watching the perpetually-sweet Golding play a cruel-minded gangster was equally entertaining here.

This movie had an opening credits sequence. The story stopped so we could listen to two minutes of music while double-exposure images and actors’ names could scroll across the screen. The only other time I’ve ever seen that done has been in James Bond flicks.
Quirky and different. I like it.

This movie was rated “R,” because Brits (and Australians, I think) use the word “cunt” like we use the word “dick,” so sentences like “don’t be a dick” sound a lot more foul, even though it’s the same intent to them.
Thus the movie was a consistent stream of very creative insults.

There was some blood, but almost exclusively restricted to splatters or things with blood on them. Nothing gory or unnecessarily violent.
Otherwise there were no special effects, just a lot of outstanding practical effects and costumes.
And one very pretty BMW with an iridescent paint job that didn’t get nearly enough screen time.

And the music. Oh, the music.
It fit every scene so damn well.
There were only a few scenes that were completely silent, which as I think back to them, make perfect sense per the way the story was being told.
Everything else: perfect musical pairings. Sometimes it was a classical bit (like Fur Elise), while others seemed to be composed for this.

The one downside to this movie: Michael and Matthew were the only Americans, while everyone else was some version of U.K. resident, which meant there was a very broad range of accents, some of which were quite thick. There were a few scenes where I told Megan it sounded like they were just speaking gibberish to each other, yet somehow knew what the other was saying.
That’s not a critique though - it just added a layer of entertainment.

In the past I’ve commented about how, when a character makes too many references to real-life items or actors, it takes me out of the illusion of the movie.
Here, one character talked to a movie studio exec of a real-life studio, in their office, with a poster of one of their real-life movies in the background. Normally that would have bothered me, but considering the way this story was being told to us as the audience, I do not consider it to be the same type of issue that “Always Be My Maybe” (2019) had.

To help with that: as this movie was actually a story being told from one character to another, there was the possibility that any detail or character action was over-dramatized or possibly completely fabricated so Fletcher could ‘sell’ his version of events better. As we were hearing the story from only Fletcher’s perspective, the details were as “true” as they needed to be.
It also easily explained away how sometimes characters appeared exactly where they needed to, exactly when they needed to, which immediately prevents me from nitpicking that!

I heard this movie described as “the return of the comedy gangster film.”

“Comedy” in this case being the very dry, slow, dark comedy that the Brits are so very good at making. I think there was one line I giggled at, but most of this was the kind of thing where the schadenfreude made any given scene delicious. Definitely don’t go into this expecting to laugh, but you’ll find yourself chuckling as someone gets their just desserts.

This was an outstanding movie. Megan and I loved every minute of it and I absolutely recommend you sit down with a drink and some popcorn and give it a watch. You’ll enjoy yourself immensely.
I’m giving it a 5-Claw not because it was particularly great for watching on an IMAX screen, but because of how good it was at preventing me from predicting how anything else was about to happen, at any given time, while keeping the same steady tone throughout.