The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie’s 2020 film follows Mickey Pearson, an American who built a marijuana empire in London and wants out, and the rivals who move on his ground once word spreads. The real device is the narrator. Fletcher, the private investigator played by Hugh Grant, tells the story not to a newspaper but to Raymond, Mickey’s right hand, and pitches it as a typed screenplay. He asks Raymond to picture it as an old school, anamorphic, cinematic journey, and the film obliges by cutting to actual celluloid. That framing has a price: every scene is performed for a buyer, so the picture keeps stopping to admire its own dialogue instead of moving. At the close Fletcher takes the script to Miramax, where Ritchie cameos as the executive, and Miramax really did produce the film. Announced in 2018 as Toff Guys, it gave Michelle Dockery the role Kate Beckinsale left. The BBFC passed it uncut at 18 for very strong language, not violence. The 2024 Netflix series shares the world and not one character. A good fit if you take the sales pitch framing as the game rather than as slack plotting. Not for you if the slur used throughout for the Asian characters, and the joke built on a Vietnamese name, will stop you cold.