The Gentlemen: Guy Ritchie Back in Action with Series about Badass Brit Criminals

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A-

Straight up, I was not a fan of Guy Ritche’s 2019 movie The Gentlemen. Neither was our Jim Slotek who, among other things, said it was a movie with “a slew of lazy double-crosses that don’t add up in the end.” I concur! And had even more problems with it. We weren’t the only people disappointed with it.

Still, I was curious about his latest version. Led by Theo James — who was so terrific in the most recent season of The White Lotus — The Gentlemen has been repurposed by Ritchie as an eight-part Netflix series about the son and heir of a noble family trying to extricate them from a deal that with the criminal underworld.

This is Ritchie’s oeuvre. He is the guy who defined the modern comic/violent British gangster genre with movies like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and RocknRolla, highly inventive, enjoyable movies with his singular style. Despite finding some of his more recent films disappointing (see 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and 2019’s Aladdin), could the miniseries be a return to form?

Happily, the answer is a big yes. The Gentleman is peak Ritchie. A slew of well-drawn, quirky characters, many of them criminals, some of them homicidal, and a loaded plot of uneasy alliances, perceived double-crosses, actual double-crosses, bad debts, psychopathic criminals, clumsy criminals and so on, this is entertaining, and a lot of fun.

James stars as Eddie Horniman, a captain in the British army who is part of a peacekeeping mission in Turkey. He is called back to England because his father is on his deathbed, which is where we discover that Eddie is from a very wealthy noble family that owns a large and beautiful estate with the requisite collection of antiques and art.

His plans to return to duty after the funeral end abruptly at the reading of the will. To the surprise of everyone, the estate has been left to Eddie and not, as is the 600-year-old family custom, to the eldest son, in this case, his older brother Freddy (an outstanding Daniel Ings).

To understate it, Freddy doesn’t take it well. It turns out that he not only enjoys his cocaine but is also in serious debt to a criminal family run by Gospel John (Pearce Quigley) a preacher and drug dealer, head of his own violent gang. Freddy was counting on the money from the estate to pay off his debts and get himself out of trouble.

While Eddie tries to fix the issue by considering selling the estate, he gets a visit from Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) who will be his guide of sorts in this regard. That starts with a major revelation: She informs him that his late father sustained the family’s wealth by leasing out part of their land to her family’s drug operation. And she takes him a hidden underground marijuana “farm” on his own property and explains things to him; namely that he and his family are under the thumb of Susie’s family.

She is running the show for her father Bobby Glass (the redoubtable Ray Winstone), who is calling the shots from his jail cell. Cool, tough unflappable Susie runs the day-to-day, business and sorts out the adventures and misadventures of all the various stakeholders without blinking an eye.

At the same time, Eddie has an apparent option on the table for an escape plan: a very rich, very refined American, Mr. Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito) wants to buy Eddie’s estate. Of course, he has a much bigger agenda, but he also has enough money to meet Eddie’s needs.

Susie helps Eddie negotiate a deal with Gospel John to pay off Freddy’s debts. Unfortunately, that goes terribly wrong and kicks off a series of issues, problems, deals, double-crosses, and negotiating with violent criminals, family issues that will carry things through the eight episodes.

The core of the series is the relationship between Eddie and Susie. Eddie is forced to depend on Susie as he tries to navigate a massive number of unpredictable, quick-to-murder criminals while keeping his eye on the prize. Susie is the experienced hand at running a drug empire, managing all the power players, mostly with the guidance of her father from his jail cell. She’s blunt with Eddie but is also managing threats against her family’s business.

There is violence of course. When Ritchie’s criminals go for payback, it isn’t pretty. But a lot of that happens in the first few episodes. Once we get the sense of how far the bad guys will go — which gives us a sense of the stakes — the series focuses more on machinations and manoeuvring.

As you’d expect from a Guy Ritchie production, the series is populated by characters who are big personalities, some charming and sweet, some simmering with poisonous intent. Every role here from the major to the minor is beautifully cast.

Another Ritchie hallmark is the amount of dialogue. Almost every major character talks a lot, and of course, another hallmark, a lot of the speechifying is of a philosophical bent.

The characters are drawn from across the range of the British class system, from nobility to travellers, commoners, and the criminals, some of whom have worked their way up to rub shoulders with the richest to those who are permanently stuck at the other end of the spectrum.

The Gentlemen ends up being everything you’d want from a classic Richie gangster film.

The Gentleman. Created by Guy Ritchie. Starring Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings, Vinnie Jones, Ray Winstone, and Joely Richardson. Now available on Netflix.