Wow, Guy Ritchie. I hadn't seen anything he directed since the 2009 Sherlock Holmes. This one looked more along the lines of Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and it has the third highest IMDb rating among his feature films.
Toward the beginning, PI Fletcher (a nearly unrecognizable Hugh Grant) crashes the English mansion of Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), right-hand man to expat marijuana kingpin Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), to tell almost the whole rest of the story, which Fletcher threatens to sell to a movie studio if Raymond doesn't pay him. The plot involves Pearson trying to sell his stash to billionaire Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong) before it becomes legal in the UK, making an unlikely alliance with thug trainer "Coach" (Colin Farrell), and accidentally getting on the wrong side of mob boss "Dry Eye" (Henry Golding) and tabloid editor Big Dave (Eddie Marsan).
As usual for Ritchie, I couldn't entirely follow it and had to look online for an explanation. In large part, I blame the speed and nearly constant dialogue. Having a very different frame of mind from career criminals may also contribute to my confusion. That said, these factors didn't stop me from digging The Godfather, so I contented myself with living in the moment, not fully caring how it all fit together.
Obviously, these guys are no more gentlemen than the Goodfellas are good fellas. The R rating is partly for violence and drug content, of course, but a couple implications of rape and a lot of swearing, especially a word that rhymes with "hunt," may contribute more. There are also racial slurs against Blacks and Asians. Some viewers take the filmmakers themselves as racist; I think they just put racial sensitivity aside, much like apparent Ritchie inspiration Quentin Tarantino.
Alas, things aren't played for laughs nearly as much as in Ritchie's two most beloved works. Or if they are, it's with less success. Perhaps the most blatantly comedic conversation is on whether calling someone a "Black *unt" is racist, which I found more tiresome than clever.
I don't dislike TG. It could easily have gone much worse. But it does make me think there's a reason Ritchie hasn't been more prominent since 2000.
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