The Gentlemen: Thank God, a Movie without a Woke Lecture

I walked out of The Gentlemen feeling as if I’d been cleansed. Cleansed of all the bullshit that chokes social media, gushes through mainstream journalism and encrusts every conversation. I’d had a good time, a rare thing these days at the movies, without having to grit my teeth through any left-wing finger-wagging or pointless proportional representation of appropriate identity groups. And even rarer, I hadn’t thought, “Well that might have been better with half an hour cut out”.

Hugh Grant is brilliant as Fletcher, the ageing, sleazy journalist who narrates the whole story to Raymond Smith, played by Charlie Hunnam. Fletcher has broken into Smith’s house to convince him that he must be given £20 million to stop him going to the media, and he delights in revealing all the dirt he has uncovered on Smith’s boss, Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey). And there is a lot of dirt indeed.

Pearson arrived at Oxford University from the US on a Rhodes Scholarship and soon found his vocation selling drugs to English toffs. He eventually amassed enough money to establish a drug empire, the details of which are both amusing and intriguing, so I’ll let you find those out for yourself. Now in middle age he is becoming tired of having it all and wants to retire, so he is looking for a buyer. This is where Matthew Berger, a quivery, hugely wealthy American Jew comes in. (Berger is played by Jeremy Strong, who co-stars in Succession, a fabulous US TV series that is also a must-see.) The baddies come in the form of a Chinese gang, who provide much of the body count and allow for a hilarious extended joke as two characters discuss the linguistic difference between “Phuc”, “fuck” and “P-huc”, as Phuc himself lies in the boot of a car pleading for his asthma inhaler.

So there is violence and humour in lavish quantities, and enough plot twists and turns to be satisfying. The only real blip in the all-star cast is Charlie Hunnam, who looks and acts as if he’s just walked off the set of Sons of Anarchy. He is implausible as Pearson’s right-hand man who enjoys the very finest things in life (much is made of his liking for wagyu steak), and he seems uncomfortable in the role. Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey have now thoroughly shrugged off their rom-com backgrounds and are captivating to watch, even if they never meet each other on-screen. And speaking of shaking off typecasting, Michele Dockery, of Downton Abbey fame, plays a gangster’s moll rather well.

So Guy Ritchie, the film’s UK writer and director (possibly best known for Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), gets it right. There is plenty in there to offend the woke SJWs, which make the complaint by the New York Times reviewer that the ratio of men to women is six to one seem bizarrely irrelevant. The point of view goes haywire sometimes, as always happens with a narrated story: one wonders “How could you possibly know that?” But then Ritchie has Raymond Smith say, “You’re making this up, Fletcher”, whereupon Fletcher giggles naughtily and admits he has to fill in some bits because he’s crafting it all into a film script ­– which he happens to have on him. It's a nice ploy, which reinforces the feeling that Ritchie is in perfect control of his medium.

Harry Wiren