Guy Ritchie is a more skilled filmmaker than people give him credit for. Of course, all his films are similar in spirit: kinetic action films with a wry sense of extremely British humor, but his dexterity comes from knowing which element of his style to emphasize for each specific project. Last year he released two films, The covenant And Operation Fortunewith vastly different tones – Operation Fortune leans more towards a comedic comedy, and The covenant it is an excellent and serious look at the tensions of wartime bureaucracy. But despite all that flexibility in filmmaking, fantastic new series on Netflix, The gentlemensees Ritchie return to his British crime roots and refine the atmosphere he does best.
Despite having the same title as an earlier Ritchie film, The gentlemen isn’t exactly a direct sequel or remake of the film. Instead, it is more spiritually connected, specifically through the connections of drugs, boxing and British dynastic wealth – three things that Ritchie always seemed fascinated by as an artist.
The show follows Eddie (Theo James), a former soldier who is retired from the army when his father dies so he can take over his dukedom, which his father passed to him instead of his older brother. While the title itself is a surprise, the bigger shock comes when Eddie discovers that his apparently law-abiding father has been leasing his land to a drug empire for the past few years, a business venture that Eddie is eager to extricate the family from as quickly as possible. if possible. Something he can of course only do by committing quite a few crimes.
Photo: Netflix
The gentlemen should be immediately recognizable to anyone who has seen Ritchie’s previous work in particular Lock, Stock and two smoking barrels or Jerking. The show is full of gangsters with criminal jokes from the Coen brothers and Tarantino movie mouths.
Where it deviates from those early Ritchie films is the level of focus, at least in the first few episodes I’ve seen so far. Instead of jumping between perspectives, playing out half a dozen stories at once and waiting for them to come together, The gentlemen keeps the action focused on Eddie, his brother Freddy (Daniel Ings), and Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), the woman responsible for the drug dealing on Eddie’s turf.
By keeping things a little tidier than Ritchie has done in the past, The gentlemen gives us more time to understand and value the leads. The characters, especially Eddie and Susie, are well-drawn and precise, more carefully rounded and interesting than any of Ritchie’s early gangsters, and deserve the attention the show pays to them. Small gestures reveal in profound ways who these people are and the ways in which they are and are not comfortable with the violence that their illegal activities often necessitate.
Of course, it’s still a Guy Ritchie project, so the three main characters are constantly surrounded by a ridiculous, fascinating and extremely funny supporting cast. The episodic format pays off here, allowing these characters to jump into the story as broad caricatures and jump out of the story once they’re no longer needed. The gentlemen uses this to bring in bizarre criminals, like a machete-wielding chop shopper with a hair trigger for violence or a hard-nosed drug dealer with an appetite for a viral chicken dance video. All of these characters are weird, funny, and perfect for building out the show’s very strange, yet extremely enjoyable, criminal underworld.
Photo: Christopher Rafael/Netflix
All of these shenanigans have an unmistakable Guy Ritchie flavor, but another of The gentlemen‘s greatest joy is that Ritchie’s sensibilities are filtered through so many other people. While Ritchie is the creator of The gentlemen, he wrote and directed only two of the show’s eight episodes and worked as an associate to oversee the rest. The episodes that Ritchie didn’t write still feel distinctly part of his world, but with a slightly refreshing and different voice that keeps it fun.
Ritchie has achieved success in many different films and genres in recent years. Even his Sherlock Holmes films are refreshingly well made after a decade of flat-feeling blockbusters. But The gentlemen proves that he hasn’t lost his step when it comes to crazy gangsters, and that he might be better at it than ever.
The gentlemen season 1 is now on Netflix.