It is often said that, at this point in the history of mankind, all the stories that can be conceived, at least in their most basic aspects, have already been told before. That is why, today – and this is increasingly important – when it comes to telling any kind of story in images, regardless of gender and content, the how is almost more important than the what.
Except in honorable exceptions, the way, for better or worse, tends to eclipse the bottom, and there is no doubt that Guy Ritchie is fully aware of this. Doing a brief review through the filmography of the British, it does not take long to verify that his personal brand, unique and hardly imitable, has been imposed in almost all his productions, making them stand out and raising booklets that have not always had optimum quality and freshness.
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With ‘The Gentlemen: The Mafia Lords’, Hatfield’s has fully recovered that essence that opened a hole in the film libraries of a large part of the cinephile collective twenty-two years ago and has been gradually diluted while the American industry phagocyted him. Ritchie has returned to his comfort zone, and has made him freer and more self-conscious than ever with a new criminal brand thriller house to frame.
A matter of style
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Although, personally, I have always given my vote of confidence to the good guy Guy Ritchie, there have been many who have considered him a case lost since it was delivered to the great Hollywood studios. And, despite having managed to keep their identity signs intact in works such as’ Sherlock Holmes’ or ‘King Arthur’ – of which I am a strong defender – that debacle entitled ‘Aladdin’, which converts’ Swept by the tide ‘in a masterpiece, he annulled him fully as an author and invited to give credit to the bad omens.
Tyler Durden said in ‘The Fight Club’ that Once bottom is touched, it can only be improved; some wise words that Ritchie takes to the letter to resurface from his ashes returning to those paths that made him great. To that London of the underworld, macarra, corrupt, violent and toxic that so many joys gave us in ‘Lock & Stock’, ‘Snatch’ and ‘RocknRolla’; to those formal and narrative places that, despite common, could not be more stimulating.
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Let’s not fool ourselves; ‘The Gentlemen: The Mafia Gentlemen’ does not innovate in the least about what the filmmaker has offered in his previous films. Again we are immersed in the underworld of the British mafia – more international than ever – by the hand of an inspired handful of characters that touch the cartoon and lead a plot that is too familiar, overflowing with unexpected turns, false expectations and structural fiddles More content than usual.
But, as we mentioned at the beginning of this text, sometimes the important thing is how something is told and not what is being told. It is at this point that Guy Ritchie takes out the heavy artillery and transforms his archetypal story into an electrifying style exercise, enriched by enviable audiovisual power – the montage of James Herbert – and for some delicious metafictional games that are still a perfect excuse to get mad at himself.
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But if there is something that makes it shine at a great level this wild orgy of violence, foul language, testosterone and black humor like coal It is a cast full of stars to which it is impossible not to fall asleep. Matthew McConaughey, Colin Farrell, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong … each and every one of them do a superb job that, inevitably, is overshadowed by the interpretation of a hugh grant hilarious and in a state of grace.
All those who missed Guy Ritchie are in luck, because ‘The Gentlemen: The Mafia Lords’ collects each and every one of the tics and mechanisms that projected his career, refined with the passage of time, and puts them at service of quality entertainment more brown and shameless that has been enjoyed in a long season.
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