The last decade has seen Guy Ritchie tackling movies based off classic literature and existing intellectual properties, but the filmmaker is returning to his crime comedy roots early next year with The Gentlemen. The movie stars Matthew McConaughey as an ex-patriate criminal who doesn’t suffer fools, and you can watch him and his adversaries go to war in the new trailer for The Gentleman below.
The Gentlemen sees Matthew McConaughey’s Mickey Pearson, who has created a “highly profitable marijuana empire” in London, but is looking to cash out his business. Naturally this results in others trying to take what he’s built by force, but Mickey won’t go down without a fight.
As you can see in the trailer, he doesn’t mince words with Henry Golding’s Dry Eyes, using a definitely-not-just-made-up fable about a “young and foolish dragon” talking with a “wise and cunning lion” to make a point about how Dry Eyes is out of his element. But Dry Eyes just doesn’t listen, believing that the young deserve to succeed the old. So instead, a gang war will unfold in The Gentlemen that’ll leave a lot of blood flowing in the streets.
The Gentlemen also stars the likes of Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong and Eddie Marsan, among others. While this movie most certainly won’t be lacking in graphic violence, in keeping with Guy Ritchie’s classic filmography, it looks like there will be plenty of lighthearted/humorous moments. I especially got a kick out of Grant’s Fletcher walking out of the bathroom, seeing a corpse being transported out and immediately making up an excuse to use the facilities again.
While Guy Ritchie got his filmmaking start with crime comedies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, as mentioned earlier, he churned out a number of mainstream Hollywood offerings these last 10 years. 2009 and 2011 saw him delivering Sherlock Holmes and its sequel, A Game of Shadows, respectively (he’s not returning for Sherlock Holmes 3), and then he followed up with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 2015.
Two years later, he delivered King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and had that movie been successful, maybe he would have directed some of the planned sequels. Alas, Legend of the Sword bombed and its franchise potential was lost, so Ritchie moved on and lent his talents to Disney by helming the Aladdin remake, which crossed the $1 billion mark at the box office.
Now he’s back in familiar territory with The Gentlemen, and it’ll be interesting to see how it compares to his previous offerings in the crime genre. As far as its commercial performance goes, we’ll just have to wait and see, but its opening weekend competition includes the supernatural horror movie The Turning and the suspense thriller Run.
The Gentlemen opens in theaters on January 24, and don’t forget to look through our 2020 release schedule to learn what other movies are coming out next year.
