--- description: Guy Ritchie's latest, The Gentlemen, is a shotgun wedding between his earlier pictures and Man From U.N.C.L.E. But it doesn't click. title: Review: 'The Gentlemen' Is Not Nearly as Classy as Advertised image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6879373c17fc55ac/698a092edb298776d8264d4f/Guy_Ritchie_The_Gentleman.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [movies](/tag/movies/) ## movies Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # _The Gentlemen_ Is Not Nearly as Classy as Advertised  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic Jan 23, 2020 10:54 AM CUT  Henry Golding, Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam try to make a gentleman’s agreement in 'The Gentlemen' Henry Golding, Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam try to make a gentleman’s agreement in 'The Gentlemen'Christopher Raphael  by [Stephanie Zacharek](/author/stephanie-zacharek/)  ## Stephanie Zacharek Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Film Critic Jan 23, 2020 10:54 AM CUT Guy Ritchie made his presence known with a bang in 1998, when the scrappy, streetthug symphony _Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels_ became a surprise hit. In the years since, he has given us two garish but entertaining Sherlock Holmes movies, a liveaction version of _Aladdin_ and one sleek, truly terrific spy caper, _The Man From U.N.C.L.E._ His latest, _The Gentlemen_, is a shotgun wedding between the brash verve of his earlier pictures and _Man From U.N.C.L.E._–style elegance. It should be a match made in heaven, but the union just doesn’t take. Matthew McConaughey stars as entrepreneur and natty dresser Mickey Pearson, an American in England who has made a fortune for himself by pulling off a minor miracle: he grows the finest marijuana in a small country with little available green space. (The movie’s most amusing sequence is a montage of countryside walkers, gently but feistily asserting their legal rights to tromp with their walking sticks wherever they please.) Looking to spend more time with the wife he adores, Michelle Dockery’s Rosalind, he hopes to sell his enterprise to an American “Jewish billionaire playboy” (Jeremy Strong, who delivers his lines in a bewildering monotone as flat as the Great Plains). But the deal isn’t as simple as it seems, and in old-school Guy Ritchie fashion, a panoply of refined criminals and street toughs–including Pearson’s cucumbercool right-hand man (Charlie Hunnam) and a classy gangster named Dry Eye (Henry Golding)–crowd into the act, mixing it up in numerous choppy sequences of stylized brutality. It should be fun–but it isn’t. Ritchie, who wrote the screenplay from a story he conceived with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, veers into territory that’s possibly anti-Semitic and maybe a little racist. It’s all a lark, so we’re not supposed to care, but some of the gags still leave a bitter aftertaste. A few of the performances–Hugh Grant as a sleazy blackmailer, Colin Farrell as a pugnacious but principled boxing coach–are enjoyable, but the movie’s star, McConaughey, is the weakest link. He’s often an enormously appealing performer, but this is McConaughey in philosophical Lincoln-commercial mode, not freewheeling _The Beach Bum_ mode. And car-commercial McConaughey is the worst McConaughey–stuck up, willfully obtuse, not funny. Here, he may be a gentleman. But he’s still a dud. 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