The Gentlemen (2024) review: An improvement upon its predecessor

The Gentlemen (2024) follows Edward, an aristocrat who unexpectedly inherits his family’s estate after his father’s death, and learns that it is home to a weed empire. To get the proprietors off his property, he must dive into the world of criminality. The series is currently streaming on Netflix.

Story

Eddie Horniman, a captain in the Queen’s Dragoon Guards posted at the Syrian border in Turkey, receives the news of his father’s post-accident serious condition.

He returns home and meets his father shortly before his passing. The family is shocked when the will is read, as Freddy, the firstborn son, is deprived of his primogeniture.

Eddie is unexpectedly made the new Duke of Halstead and equally as unexpectedly he comes to learn that a weed empire’s one of many farms operates from beneath their dairy farm.

To extricate his family from this illegal business, and to contend with the fallout of his foul-up of a brother’s actions, Eddie tries his best to play the gangsters at their own game.

He’s helped by Susie Glass, the daughter of Bobby Glass, the exiled head of the drug organization. As he begins to navigate the world, he helps the business bloom, while acquiring a taste for it all.

The Gentlemen ends with a snappy denouement where all minor and major characters, including Eddie, make big choices and place huge bids to get their hands on the cannabis empire.

Performances

Theo James plays the suave soldier aristocrat with the kind of panache that sets him apart from most other characters in the roster, even those who are aristocratic like him.

Eddie is supposed to be a suave gentleman who has both the wits and the ruggedness from being a soldier. Theo makes Eddie believable and someone the audience can root for rather easily.

Kaya Scodelario as Susie Glass is perhaps the most electrifying performance in The Gentlemen. She says more with her eyes in a narrative filled with the spoken word.

And that’s not to say that she doesn’t do much with words. Her deliveries are on par with any other heavyweight in the show, while also managing the sultry charms.

Daniel Ings as Freddy is a lot of fun to see unravel and unwind in all his coke-addled mania. He plays the fool like it’s no joke.

Giancarlo Esposito has been almost pigeonholed with the kind of characters he gets to play. As Stanley Johnston with a ‘T’, he is similar to the characters he’s played before, on TV and even in video games.

That said, Esposito’s addition can never not be a plus, as he’s one of the most reliable actors today and he ever so effortlessly proves that in The Gentlemen.

Vinnie Jones as Geoff is one of the more impressive supporting performances. The same can be said about Peter Serafinowicz, who manages to be a riot even through his severe Scouse mumbling.

Positives

Eddie and Susie have a chemistry that refreshingly doesn’t lead to the clichéd inevitability and proves to be the highlight of the entire series. Theo and Kaya both shine the brightest when they’re sharing the screen.

The Guy Ritchie flourishes are sporadic but appreciated anytime they adorn the storytelling.

The show is helped by a solid cast of actors who bring the charm a Ritchie venture always gets a lot of mileage from, which is true of this series as well.

The trademark banter is here too, and it’s not so self-indulgent or vernacular-heavy that it becomes incomprehensible chitter-chatter, so that’s a plus.

Being a spin-off of the 2019 hit film of the same name, one would naturally draw parallels and make comparisons; comparatively speaking, the Netflix series is tamer for its own good.

Nobody wants a bunch of tracksuit-sporting chaps coercing a delirious geezer into having sex with a pig and filming it.

That, and the casual racism in the film exist to wash out all the quirky comedy one would otherwise have far more fun with.

The Gentlemen doesn’t rely on shock, apart from a couple of dramatically enthused hacking of humans from a Colombian-descent gangster.

It does have racist remarks and pejoratives being thrown onto a family of travelers, but it is nowhere near as dated or problematic as the film.

Negatives

The biggest draw of a Guy Ritchie joint is the fast pace with which it jumps around the timeline of events and cuts between scenes and sequences.

So an eight-hour affair that works with all the beats that its predecessor does just feels bloated and slow. It takes its time getting to the points in the story that one could easily see coming a mile away.

If Eddie’s transformative arc was more ‘show’ than ‘tell’, it would have been much more impactful; but it’s not, so it’s not.

The final set pieces leading up to Eddie and Susie’s embracing of their calling and talents, happen in a rather hasty manner.

Mercy and the Russians are just dealt with easily, and so is Henry Collins. However, it’s Stanley Johnston’s takedown that feels most disappointingly unremarkable and easy.

The show uses words, i.e., snappy banter and playful, quirky dialog; but using words even when actions are tacit enough on their own, is redundant, annoyingly so.

Verdict

The Gentlemen (2024) is definitely an improvement upon its predecessor, even with the bloated segments and at times lethargic pace.

The quips and quirks that the fans of Guy Ritchie’s filmography enjoy so much are here, albeit in diluted, less effective doses.

All in all, the Netflix series does away with the problematic parts of the original while also doing a better job satirizing the “original gangsters” — the British aristocrats.

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