If there’s one thing we know director Guy Ritchie is good at, it’s gangsters. While his filmography is varied, some of our favorites of his are of the England-set criminal underworld variety. One of his best known recent crime capers is his 2019 film The Gentlemen, an action comedy centred on a clueless American expat trying to sell his drugs empire in London. And now The Gentlemen are coming back, this time as a Netflix series.
The show is set in the same world as the movie. However, Netflix says that the characters will be different. It promises that The Gentlemen “will have all the same bite – along with a bunch of fresh tricks”.
This time around the story follows Theo James (The White Lotus) as Eddie Horniman, the estranged son of an English aristocrat – the people who are “the original gangsters”... Does he find himself embroiled in a world of criminality? Is Ray Winstone in it? Are there fast motors and lots of shooters? Yes, yes and yes!
What to expect from The Gentlemen on Netflix
As you can see from the trailer, it’s a highly stylish, sometimes brutal and often funny affair where “crime meets caviar”. And it’s highly likely to deliver the same mix of thrills and laughs as the film it’s based on, which attracted largely positive reviews. Although the critics that didn’t like it, really didn’t like it. The Guardian for one didn’t like its “dated” humor and “casual racism” and The New Yorker called it “a nasty piece of work” that revels in its characters’ homophobia: “the movie is baiting us, praying that we will take offense”. Which makes it sound like one of those Netflix comedy specials that the streamer seems so keen on...
Hopefully Ritchie read those reviews and toned things down, because that offensiveness mars what other critics felt was a fun and funny romp. For example, Empire magazine said that “what it lacks in freshness and depth, The Gentlemen certainly makes up for in cartoon-y bluster and fun details”. Here’s to hoping that this time the only attempts at triggering are in relation to the gunplay.
The Gentlemen will start streaming on Netflix, the best streaming service, from March 2024.
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