The Gentlemen

Plot

Michael "Mickey" Pearson is an American born into poverty who won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he began selling marijuana before dropping out and becoming a drug baron, building a criminal empire in blood and growing cannabis in labs on the estates of aristocratic landlords who needed cash for the upkeep of their stately homes.

Now middle-aged, Pearson plans to sell his empire and retire peacefully with his wife, Rosalind. His chosen buyer is American billionaire and cannabis baron Matthew Berger, and his sale price is £400 million. After showing Berger one of the labs, Pearson is approached by up-and-coming Chinese gangster Dry Eye, who offers to buy him out, but Pearson turns him down.

Amateur MMA fighters and aspiring YouTubers "The Toddlers" raid the lab Pearson showed to Berger; they overpower the guards, steal marijuana, and upload a rap video of their caper online. The Toddlers' horrified trainer, "Coach", orders them to delete the video.

Seeking to expose Pearson, Daily Print tabloid newspaper editor Big Dave hires private detective Fletcher to investigate Pearson's links to one of his landlords, Lord Pressfield, a duke whose daughter Laura is a heroin-addicted pop star living in a council estate with other addicts. At Pressfield's request, Pearson sends his right-hand man, Raymond, to bring Laura home. In a brawl with her flatmates, one of Raymond's men accidentally kills Aslan, a young Russian. Laura is returned to her parents, but shortly after, she relapses and dies of an overdose.

Coach visits Raymond, apologises for The Toddlers' actions, and offers his services in compensation. Coach discovers that The Toddlers learned about Pearson's lab location from Dry Eye. Dry Eye is actually in league with Berger, who seeks to disrupt Pearson's business in order to reduce the sale price; Dry Eye, meanwhile, continues to covet Pearson's empire for himself. Dry Eye tries to kidnap Rosalind, who kills his men before running out of bullets; Pearson arrives on the scene and kills Dry Eye as he is about to rape her.

Fletcher attempts to blackmail Pearson, offering Raymond everything he has discovered about these events for £20 million; otherwise, he says he will turn the information over to Big Dave. Coach has The Toddlers capture Big Dave; they drug him and film him having sex with a pig, threatening to post the video online unless he drops his investigation.

Production

Development and casting

It was announced in May 2018 that Guy Ritchie would write and direct Toff Guys, a film that would be in the same spirit as his earlier Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The project was unveiled at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival by CAA Media Finance and Rocket Science where Miramax acquired the distribution rights for more than $30 million and joined the film as a co-financier. Filming was expected to begin in October. In October, Matthew McConaughey, Kate Beckinsale, Henry Golding and Hugh Grant were cast, with Jeremy Strong, Jason Wong and Colin Farrell joining in November. Later, Michelle Dockery signed on, replacing Beckinsale in her role. In December 2018, Lyne Renée was added as well.

Filming

Principal photography began in November 2018. Filming locations included West London Film Studios, Longcross Studios, The Princess Victoria pub in Shepherd's Bush and Brompton Cemetery.

Release

In February 2019, STX Entertainment acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film, retitled Bush, from Miramax for $7 million. The film would be retitled once again to The Gentlemen, premiering as a VIP special screening at Curzon Mayfair on December 3, 2019. It was theatrically released in the UK on January 1, 2020, and in the US on January 24, 2020. The studio spent around $25 million on promoting the film.

Home media

The Gentlemen was released on home media and video on demand on March 24, 2020. It was previously set for a home media release on April 7, but was moved up due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and Ultra HD Blu-ray on April 21, 2020, by Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

Reception

Box office

The Gentlemen grossed $15.9 million in the United Kingdom, $36.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $62.8 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $115.2 million.

In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside The Turning, and was projected to gross around $10 million from 2,100 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $3.1 million on its first day, including $725,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $10.6 million, finishing fourth at the box office. It then made $6 million in its second weekend, finishing fifth. In its third and fourth weekends the film made a respective $4.2 million and $2.7 million.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 75% based on 277 reviews, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "It may not win writer-director Guy Ritchie many new converts, but for those already attuned to the filmmaker's brash wavelength, The Gentlemen stands tall." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B+ on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported an average 3.5 out of 5 stars, with 48% of people saying they would definitely recommend it.

Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Leah Greenblatt rated the film a B− and found it to come up short when compared to Ritchie's previous crime films, stating, "The Gentlemen is nothing if not a callback to the Locks of yesteryear, star-stacked and defibrillated with enough juice to jolt a gorilla out of cardiac arrest."

Lawsuit

Three years after the film's release, Ritchie was sued by the actor Mickey De Hara (who had played Turbo in Ritchie's prior film RocknRolla) for copying the "cast of characters, their characterisation and 'unique aspects of the plot'" from a screenplay De Hara had offered Ritchie as a sequel to RocknRolla. De Hara claimed that when he had tried to address the issue out of court, Ritchie responded, "Mickey, I and my people have tried to contact you for some years now. There was no response. I am happy for us to sit down and have a chat." De Hara claimed that the most blatant instance of copying was a scene involving the character Coach and "The Toddlers" gang he leads, which was an almost exact match to a scene from De Hara's screenplay with a character Coach leading a group of thugs nicknamed "The Baby Squad." Ritchie filed his defence to the London High Court denying the allegations in August 2023. Ritchie confirmed that discussions took place regarding a potential RocknRolla sequel or trilogy and that he used some aspects of the screenplay for The Gentlemen; however, he claimed the contributions of De Hara were well below both the Writers Guild of America and Writers Guild of Great Britain thresholds to receive credit.

Netflix series

In October 2020, Miramax Television started development on a spin-off television series of the film, with Ritchie overseeing the project. In November 2022, the series was officially greenlit by Netflix. The plot was written by Guy Ritchie and Matthew Read. Ritchie directed the first two episodes and serves as executive producer alongside Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies, and Bill Block. The Gentlemen stars Theo James, alongside Vinnie Jones, Kaya Scodelario, Giancarlo Esposito, Daniel Ings, Joely Richardson, Peter Serafinowicz, Alexis Rodney, Chanel Cresswell and Max Beesley.