Before you dive into the hit TV series "The Gentlemen" (streaming now on Netf) - wait, sorry, you've never heard of it? Well, before you skim the Wikipedia page for "The Gentlemen" (streaming now on Netflix) be sure to check out movie "The Gentlemen" from which it has been spun off, which you also haven't heard of. But that doesn't mean that you haven't seen this movie before, if you've seen any other Guy Ritchie films that aren't Sherlock or the inexplicable live action Aladdin.

I wouldn't say this movie has a lot of direct references to his previous dialogue-heavy semi-comedy, style-driven British gangster films, but it is certainly one of them, and it has a lot of mirrors of the early ones. It has his intricately overlapping plans and plots, it has his beloved gangster pigs for some reason, it has his Irish boxer, it has his Russian mafioso, and so on. Like Tarantino, it's not always very easy to tell where the line is between his characters being racist/sexist scumbags and him including just a few too many "is this movie itself being a bit racist/sexist" moments in service of his slightly over-the-top characters, but it all works out to a pretty entertaining movie, and hey, at least it's definitely not pro-cop.

Aside from that, the narrative structure works out pretty well, with the story being essentially told as a story, and wrapping together with the "real" events of the movie, but leaving enough doubt in any individual scene that the stylization makes sense (after all, it could just be embellishment) and allowing those scenes to be dramatic without having to necessarily completely make sense. I think it does just the right amount of cutting back and forth between the present and the story being told in the present to make it work. Presenting the entire story in the movie as a pitch for a movie to the company that actually made the real movie is pretty silly.

In the end, I don't think there's much new here that wasn't already in one of his other four movies of this exact style, and maybe it doesn't quite live up to Snatch, but if you need more quick smash cuts and stylish gangsters then it is witty enough and interesting enough to get the job done.

Score: 6/10

IMDb: The Gentlemen

PS: I appreciate Hugh Grant's continued ascent from Rom-Com Lead Guy to Weird Funny Old Character Actor Guy who picks a bunch of funny and random projects to do. Certainly this movie and Paddington 2 are quite distinct. Keep up the good work, Mr. Grant, and may you continue to be a huge grump to the media.

PPS: Kind of a shame Guy Ritchie's Arthurian movie series didn't pan out. I'd still watch a second one. I think it probably mostly killed Charlie Hunnam's career as the next big thing, too, although if we're being honest that was probably never going to happen.