The Gentlemen: If ChatGPT made a Guy Ritchie series, this would be it
Vinnie Jones? Irrelevant boxing matches? Cannabis? Tick, tick, tick — this Netflix caper is Ritchie by numbers.
Guy Ritchie! Wot a geezer. Also, what a journey. Who can forget him bursting on to the scene in 1998 with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, with its warehouses full of weed, Cockneys on the make, convoluted scams between multi-ethnic gangs, Vinnie Jones with big guns, and tangential scenes in boxing rings? And then following it up with Snatch, which had all these things, too? Well, now he’s back with The Gentlemen on Netflix, which has warehouses full of weed, Cockneys on the make, convoluted arguments between multi-ethnic gangs, Vinnie Jones with big guns and tangential scenes in boxing rings.
Sorry, I don’t mean to slag him off. Or rather, I do, and am about to, but not for that. More recently, Ritchie has also made a couple of war films and an adaptation of, um, Aladdin. The Gentlemen, though, is a spin-off of a film of the same name from 2019, which from distant memory had Hugh Grant in a fake beard and Colin Farrell in a hat. Also from distant memory, it was so very Guy Ritchie that it could as easily have been made by somebody taking the piss, but so what? Ritchie is mockable for the same reason that he is imitable, which is that he birthed a genre.
The trouble with The Gentlemen, though, is that it feels less like it’s been made by an imitator than it has been by a bot. After a promising preamble, our first gangster comes in at the 15-minute mark, locking somebody in a freezer. Our first cellar of weed follows 10 minutes later. By the time we see our first illegal boxing match (42 minutes and 38 seconds; literally no reason) we’ve already had a run-through of “the Americans . . . the Albanians, the Chinese, the Russians, sitting happily next to the Ukrainians, and then the travelling community”. Plus Scousers and a stoner hippy in a silly hat. And none of this is even really the plot.
That centres on Eddie Horniman (Theo James), a British Army officer and aristocrat who is summoned back from peacekeeping duties in Syria after his father, a duke, has a fall. Back home, after the old lad pops his clogs, Eddie swiftly discovers that he is to be the new duke, passing over his older brother Freddy (a silly but scene-stealing Daniel Ings) on account of the latter being an incorrigible coke addict.
Shortly afterwards, he discovers that the family estate contains a massive underground warehouse growing (yes) cannabis. This is run by a London crime family represented by the glamorous if blank gang princess Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), who seems to know her way round the farmyard far better than Eddie does despite never having the right shoes.
I shouldn’t spoil the surprise by telling you who her father is when he turns up later. Although, come on, they’re a London crime gang and ChatGPT doesn’t mess this stuff up. Obviously it’s Ray Winstone.
Meanwhile (and Guy Ritchie plots are all about the “meanwhiles”), he also learns that Freddy has got himself into heavy debt with a rival Scouser gang (Peter Serafinowicz’s accent may be a hate crime), which the estate cannot afford. Also (also, there are “alsos”) there’s a shadowy US billionaire played by Giancarlo Esposito (whom you may remember in Breaking Bad as Gus Fring, particularly because he’s basically playing him again), who wants to buy everything. By this point you may be wondering where Vinnie Jones fits in. He’s the groundskeeper and lives in a cottage full of adopted animals, including a fox and an owl. Yes, like Hagrid. Because Ritchie, when not predictable, is deeply weird.
You might think this all sounds promising, and at first I did, too. I haven’t even yet mentioned Joely Richardson, playing Lady Sabrina, who is Eddie and Freddy’s mum. So you can’t fault the cast. The script will make you giggle, if not as much as it wants you to, and the general set-up of Eddie’s embrace by gangsterism (“He can navigate the upper echelons of society and shoot somebody in the head without worrying about it,” Scodelario’s Glass explains approvingly) is neat, if a bit 2004.
The point at which I started to properly worry, though, was only at the end of the first episode. Here, Serafinowicz’s Scouser is making Freddy dress up as a chicken. Don’t worry about why. See above, re “weird”. The thing is, it just goes on so loooong. As in, there’s a gangster, and an aristocrat dressed as a chicken, and one is making the other do a funny dance, and you will be bored. Which is quite the failing.
And then if, like me, you venture into episodes two, three and four, you will feel that boredom returning. It’s slack, unedited, aimless, full of people wandering expectantly into the usual Rolodex of locations a beat before the script has come up with a reason to put them there.
Characters, once central, simply disappear. God knows where Vinnie Jones goes. Off with his owl, I suppose. It’s as if Ritchie, who at his best is the absolute snappiest of film-makers, got bored too. He’s done this before.
Once upon a time Lock, Stock ... was made into a TV series, too. That was in 2000; I’ve just looked it up. Wow, I’m old. The first episode was amazing. The second, hmm. Before long it was on life support. This is like that. I don’t think his heart is in it. Only telly, innit?
Them Netflix mugs have been done.
The Gentlemen is streaming on Netflix
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