Film Review - The Gentlemen (18)

There's only one rule in the jungle: when the lion's hungry, he eats.

As sure as eggs in an Eastend pub are pickled, so Guy Ritchie is guaranteed to return - every few films - to the London-based crime drama. It made his name, after all, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch taking the 90s' Tarantino-inspired taste for pulp fiction and giving it a thoroughly Brit reworking. And he's never shaken his love of the sub-genre he helped shape, following up the serviceable live-action Aladdin he directed for Disney with this new Laaandan gangster epic. It's certainly as quotable and convoluted as his early efforts, but not of significantly greater depth.

In this latest underworld foray Matthew McConaughey is Mickey Pearson, an ex-pat American bad-boy plying his illegal trade in Blighty. Mickey, the owner of numerous cunningly concealed marijuana farms, is contemplating retirement from his empire. He appears to have the perfect buyer in suave cannabis 'Kingpin Mathew' (Jeremy Strong), but matters complicate fast when London Chinese gangster Dry Eye (Henry Golding) tries to muscle in. And then there's the unwelcome interest of seedy investigative journalist Fletcher (a whole new version of Hugh Grant) to contend with. As ever, life in Ritchie's criminal underworld is destined to get complex and messy.

In terms of pure craft this tall new tale has much to commend it. Admittedly it's like a fine-tuning of the knotty crime stories the director has told before - with its multi-stranded narrative, rogue's gallery of characters drawn from all social layers and arch use of voiceover. This time around the last of those is supplied by Grant in the film's often delicious framing scenes - a protracted piece of verbal fencing between creepy journo and McConaughey's right hand man Raymond (Charlie Hunnam). It's an artful device, allowing story threads to be drawn together wittily as the characters spar. (Hugh has endless fun with the kind of weaselly role he'd never have been granted - ha! - in his pretty-boy youth.)

The main narrative is pacy and funny, ducking and diving between stately homes and concrete housing estates, as Mickey attempts to put his affairs in order. It's populated with actors playing against type: Downton Abbey's Michelle Dockery as our antihero's East London girlfriend Rosalind, Golding as a genuinely nasty piece of crime-family work and Colin Farrell as - well - the drily humorous and totally Colin Farrell-esque gym owner 'Coach'. They're written with panache and steered towards a wildly careering and inevitably violent conclusion.

All of which brings me to the 'but', one that prevents me from concurring with the film's high audience rating on IMDb. For all its sharply-crafted tale telling and buckets of style, The Gentlemen ultimately feels hollow. Yes there's a perfecting of the style that Ritchie employed back in Lock, Stock..., but there's no sense of his writing having matured thematically. There are the nasty bad-guys we dislike and the cool ones we root for. There's the colourful banter, revelling in its own un-pc nature. There are casual atrocities played as gags. It all elicits laughter for sure, but carries little dramatic weight, a flaw only accentuated by the the film's obvious homage to classic British gangster flick The Long Good Friday. (Now that had serious dramatic weight.) Oh, and I can't lie - the accumulation of racial and homophobic humour in the dialogue becomes plain uncomfortable by the end. 

There's no doubt about it - this further jaunt around Guy Ritchie's knowingly artificial world of Brit-crime is entertaining. But contrast it with the elegaic tone of Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood, the latest from the man with whom his early career was most readily compared, and there's a sense of the London lad not having gone that far. The criminals here may be classier and the production more slick, but that's all that's changed. The Gentlemen exhibits talent at every point, but in the end it's throwaway.

Gut Reaction: Interest throughout and quite a lot of laughter - but it also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

Memorable Moment: Colin Farrell's chip shop take-down.

Ed's Verdict: 6.5/10. It's cleverly written, tightly made and there's undeniable enjoyment in the watching. But at points it's unpleasant and in the end it's pretty empty. 

Festive Forays - Last Christmas (12A)

Missing, kissing - it's almost like we're having a relationship.

It's something of a cinematic Holy Grail - to make a Christmas movie that turns out a modern classic, one that'll join It's a Wonderful Life and The Muppet Christmas Carol and Love Actually in that pantheon of festive TV perennials. Last year alone saw The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (striped eye-candy but really muddled both plot- and tone-wise) and a Grinch update (fine animation, but ultimately not offering enough that was distinctive to earn a place on the Top List). Now 2019 brings us Last Christmas, a Yuletide comedy spiced with romance, poignancy and the songs of George Michael. As of now the reviews seem way too polarised for the film to show December-time staying-power. But Love Actually garnered a similarly mixed response - and personally I like this movie better. Quite a lot better. So let's just wait and see...

Emilia Clarke has relinquished her Game of Thrones dragon to play Kate, a cynical soul, whose mood isn't helped by her job dressed as a Santa's elf in a year-round Christmas store. Kate's life is a string of thoughtless acts and Fleabag-style bad choices, as she alienates one friend after another and holds her immigrant Slovakian family at arm's length. Then as actual Christmas approaches, she meets Tom - a life-embracing oddball, who refuses play their developing friendship by Kate's misanthropic rules. Whoever this guy is, he may be the only person who can help her face up to her very specific demons and stop her downward spiral into disaster.

There's a reason I include a 'Gut Reaction' at the end of my reviews - it's my first and most important guide to rating a film. Whatever some naysayers have been saying about Last Christmas, it won me early and despite occasional bumps held me throughout. Clarke is the main (but by no means only) reason. Post-Thrones she provides a luminous comic presence, one that shines through her frazzled, sarky demeanour. She's likeable, even though she's awful. Kate is a driving force through the story's early stages, but she's backed up by the sublime Michelle Yeoh (Crazy Rich Asians) as 'Santa', the Christmas store's eccentric proprietor, and co-writer Emma Thompson, who's having a great old time as the heroine's overbearing fuss-budget mother. Then Henry Golding (another Crazy Rich alumnus) shows up as the mercurial Tom, playing sincerity as deeply charming, while the story hits its romantic stride. 

Any danger of the film falling too deep into seasonal shmaltz is undercut by the sheer vinegar of the humour, not least when Kate clashes with other members of her dysfunctional family. Yes, a travelogue of London locations are shown at their twinkly end-of-year best, but there's a moody darkness here too, one at odds with the delightful Christmas kitsch of 'Santa''s Covent Garden store. We feel intimations of mortality, along with familial angst and political tensions - not unlike It's a Wonderful Life - ensuring that the inevitably life-affirming arc of the story never becomes too saccharine.

Then there's the film's final act, one that's proving divisive. If you know your Christmas movies - I mean historically - then it won't come as a complete surprise, or upend your expectations too much. I (kind of) saw it coming, but that didn't detract at all from the experience, in fact it enhanced the story, turning this from a run-of-the-mill Yuletide heart-warmer into something more weighty. If you think it leans too much into melodrama, I get that, but personally I thought it took a risk that paid off beautifully. 

Not everything in the film works. As with Paul Feig's last film A Simple Favor there are comedy moments that don't quite gel or that jar tonally, although those moments are rare enough not to matter. As for the George Michael element - while his writing served as inspiration, don't expect the songs to play an integral role. They're woven in, adding a subtle commentary to the story of long-time George fan Kate, with Heal the Pain working a particular kind of emotional magic.

I saw Last Christmas after the first wave of mixed critical responses - wanting to like it, but bracing myself for disappointment. The disappointment didn't happen and the liking did. While some people's response is your actual nausea, I genuinely enjoyed it, in fact I think it's a Greatest Showman-style crowd-pleaser and to hell with the sniffier critiques. It'll stick around longer than many predicted and some audience members will want to watch it every time the holidays come around. And if I'm right in that, it may just find its place in the Christmas movie pantheon.

Gut Reaction: I made me laugh. It made me tear up a bit. It charmed my socks off and replaced them with woollen ones bearing a reindeer motif.

Memorable Moment: Not a successful family dinner.

Ed's Verdict: 7.5/10. Good-hearted and life-affirming, Last Christmas tempers its Hallmark sentiment with bittersweet humour and a great central turn from Clarke. Deck the flipping Halls, people!