The gentleman review

[Westside Steve]

The Gentlemen
Miramax
R                       112 min

If you think this stuff sounds familiar it’s because it is. Don’t know what you call it but there’s a genre of movie that includes rough East End British accents quirky rapid-fire dialog and a lot of violent nonsense. Think of LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and ROCKNROLLA. You know the bloke; Guy Ritchie.  
You will probably spend the first third of this film trying to figure out just exactly WTF is going on at which point you begin to realize that the answer is not much. Oh, there's a bunch of people fighting over a bunch of things but at no point do they seem much more than random events and less often provide either the protagonists or antagonists with charisma. It’s also a little bit tricky trying to tell them apart since so many are wearing plaid, or vintage clothing, eyeglasses and facial hair. Luckily Matthew McConaughey is the one cast member with a Southern drawl so he’s easier to spot.
Charlie Hunnam on the other hand, you remember Jax from SONS OF ANARCHY actually is English but apparently has been using the American accent so long he slips back into it on occasion. One of the story lines involves various gangsters trying to take over other gangsters’ territory and their nefarious deeds get caught in the photographic lens of a private investigator, Hugh Grant in a rare role apart from romantic English comedy. Trust me he’s a lot creepier here. He has been hired by a minor English nobleman to find his heroin-addicted daughter, who has taken up with some young snotty ne'er do wells, and bring her home. One of them is connected with the gang wars and ends up on the investigators film roll along with some other things. Remember David Hemmings in BLOW UP? The Chinese mob wants to take over McCaughey’s territory and the young Chinese mobster wants to unseat the old Chinese mobster.    About two-thirds of the way through it either becomes more interesting or less boring depending on your point of view. The conflicts begin to come into focus, though I didn’t really care who won. On the other hand, I didn’t really hate anybody badly enough to want to see them get killed. (Well maybe the young Chinese mobster ‘Dry Eye.’)
Still once it finally got rolling THE GENTLEMEN was just weird enough to keep your attention can I guess that’s better than nothing. It started out pretty slow but it ended up with a…
C+
(There is certainly a group of Guy Ritchie aficionados out there that love this kind of film so they’ll probably like it more than I did)
WSS