IN THEATRES: The Gentlemen

Drug lord Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey) is keen to retire and sell off his empire. As word spreads of his decision, various forces arise to claim as much of it as they can, including an upcoming gangster (Henry Golding) and an unscrupulous journalist (Hugh Grant).

As the bodies pile up and unseen enemies attack his infrastructure, Mickey and his right-hand man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam) scramble to figure out what's going on.

After a decade of big-budget Hollywood efforts (including the Sherlock Holmes films and, uh, King Arthur - Legend of the Sword), Guy Ritchie returns to the world of the British criminal underworld of his debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (as well as Snatch and RocknRolla).

Weirdly, the film this most reminded me of was Jon Favreau's Chef, in that it represents the filmmaker returning to a smaller but familiar template to regain his mojo - with McConaughey's character as an avatar for the veteran filmmaker trying to maintain his business in a rapidly changing world (while trying to deal with American interests who attempt to betray him).

Now I have not seen any of the above films, so I cannot judge how far this movie diverges from or emulates his previous work.

As a film in its own right, The Gentlemen has an interesting conceit - the story is told as a series of flashbacks as a muckraking tabloid journalist (Hugh Grant) tries to blackmail a gangster (Charlie Hunnam) by revealing what he knows of his dealings with his boss (McConaughey).

Throughout the movie, something about it rubbed me the wrong way.

The focus of the film is on middle-aged gangsters, and the younger characters are presented as either villains or victims. There is a sense of helplessness to these characters that can only be resolved by our heroes' maintaining control.

While conflict between generations can make for interesting cinema, The Gentlemen is only interested in using that conflict to preserve the status quo. There is a subtext of generational rage and racism running through the movie that made the whole experience somewhat unpleasant.

The film is concerned with themes of ageing and the changing face of London. While the film has a diverse cast, the story is filled with caricatures who are all presented as various kinds of antagonists or obstacles for Mickey and Raymond.

This is most obvious in the character of Dry Eye (Henry Golding), one of the film's antagonists. He is presented as the most despicable character in the film, a psychopath with no respect for the rules the other characters live by. While it is interesting to see Golding take on a different role from the somewhat milquetoast characters he has played recently, the character of Dry Eye feels like check list for the worst bad guy cliches. His final act feels like the worst kind of lazy misogynistic writing, and when combined with the film's presentation of POC, it evokes Birth of a Nation.

There is also a clear disdain for anyone who is not white, male and well-off - our heroes run into gangs of hooligans on drugs, Youtube-obsessed rappers-boxers. The ultimate antagonist behind the scheme taps into such an old stereotype I was shocked that it made it to screen.

What is worse is that Ritchie plays the whole thing for laughs, but there is no satire here - the punchline is that all of these people fulfilled their stereotypes.

It is a bummer because in the middle of all this, Hugh Grant is really good as a seedy tabloid journalist (which feels like an in-joke on his relationship with British tabloids).

Other than that, The Gentlemen just feels angry and tired.

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