The Gentlemen (18)

Remember when Guy Ritchie made good films? I mean yeah, sure, Lock Stock was a while back. And so was Snatch. And those Sherlock films. But they were good.

Or at least alright in the case of the second Sherlock one.

But he had his style, he had his cinematic tropes, and on their day they worked.

Sadly, this wasn't his day.

But it's not for lack of trying.

It's clear he remembers what those tricks and flicks were, he's just decided to try different ones.

Plus, he's tried once again to overthink things. And that never ends well.

For those of you who haven't seen the frankly brilliant, fast-paced, action-packed, gag-ridden trailer, The Gentlemen is essentially about film making.

Yeah, the trailer doesn't give that away either...

Hugh Grant plays a private investigator who is trying to blackmail a dope baron because he believes he's uncovered all the secrets.

His method of blackmail is detail the film he has written about what he thinks he knows — and this is how the film unfolds.

Taking the role of narrator, Grant's ludicrously over-blown camp Fletcher explains his plot to Charlie Hunman's increasingly bored Raymond.

And it doesn't take long for the audience to be as bored as Raymond.

Cutting between the 'action' and the conversation should at the very least give you a change of pace, but if anything the result slows down both.

Part of the problem is Ritchie is trying to be too clever. He's trying to make the film he's also telling you about and in the process he loses focus and we lose interest.

Further problems lie in the characters and direction the actors haven't been given.

No one here has any depth or substance, and so it's up to the stars to give themselves something to work with.

Grant is clearly having fun doing a caricature of a crooked, sleazy, gay guy — but he dances a fine line between enjoyably overblown and annoying.

Matthew McConaughey, meanwhile, was also given nothing to work with and so can't be arsed — lazing his way through everything with the offcuts from True Detective.

Hunman is caught between sinister and cool and so fails at both, while the usually brilliant Jeremy Strong is clearly delivering lines he doesn't actually believe in.

The only two coming out of this film with any conviction are Colin Farrell (bolshy, slightly comic Irishman) and Michelle Dockery (channelling every female EastEnders villain ever).

Honestly, without those two this thing would have been a lot worse.

The action itself was fine, but lacking pace and (ironically) punch, while the dialogue aimed for updated Lock Stock but fell woefully short.

(The scene where a white man explains to a black guy why being called a 'black [expletive]' isn't racist is a cringefest rather then the sharp edge Ritchie was clearly after)

Including the offices of the actual production company and posters of Ritchie's previous work just put a tin lid on the whole thing.

Somewhere in here is a cracking, less offensive, sharp, sassy shoot-em-up about posh gangsters.

Instead Ritchie decides to go all 'meta', inserts needless film references in a bid to prove he knows what he's doing, and we all sit there bored waiting for the other two Farrell funny bits.

Oh, and there's a slight plot lift from BBC crime drama Shetland in the mix too. Which was nice.

Still, that Lock Stock eh? That was good...