3 Short Paragraphs: The Gentlemen

2019, Guy Ritchie (Snatch) -- download

We open with Matthew McConaughey (awright awright awright), all be-tweeded but still very American, walking into a British pub and ordering a pint. He walks to the juke box and orders up his favourite tune. Then a shadowy figure steps in behind him and we hear the sound of a silence gunshot. Blood sprays the pint of bitter. We begin with an ending.

This movie is peak-Ritchie, in that we get Very British Characters doing very British things, and they are usually crime. If the Ocean's X movies could be a hyper-extension of not only being criminals but also being American, then Ritchie is the auteur of doing it in the UK. In fact he may have established the mould. After that establishing shot, we find out McConaughey is Pearson, a transplanted American, when he was young. In his youth he set himself up as the key guy to get weed for the fellow youths of the gentry. And from there, he became one of Ritchie's signature crime bosses who is destined to beset with trouble.

The plot (not just of the movie, but of the characters) is that Pearson wants to sell his business in anticipation of weed becoming legal within a decade. He doesn't see himself as the mogul of such, so get out while the getting out is good. But others have other plans, including a Tong Gang rising star called Dry Eye (Henry Golding) and a media mogul (Eddie Marsan) who was once slighted by Pearson. And of course, there are some crossed-paths and hijinx, the unfortunately dead Russian junkie and Coach's (Colin Farrell) misguided group of MMA fighters-in-training who also want to be YouTube darling thugs. There is ... just ... so ... much. And.. AND... and, this is all being relayed and embellished by an absolutely lovingly creepy Hugh Grant to Pearson's right hand man Ray (Charlie Hunnam) as a proposed script for a movie, just This Side of Too Clever by not trying to be a pitch for a Peak Ritchie movie.  Nudge nudge wink wink.