I’ve been ragging on Guy Ritchie as a filmmaker for a few
years now, and I feel the need to clear some things up. For as much as I’ve
taken issue with his more recent efforts, I don’t want to come across like my
objections are coming from some knee-jerk “how dare he try and do something
different” shit. Rather, I keep pointing this out because I’ve seen enough of
Ritchie’s work to know where his strengths lie. He’s a Brit-crime storyteller,
and a damn effective one when he plays to what he does best. But as soon as he
reaches for something bigger, his limitations present themselves.
Whether it’s coating his usual style in philosophical
wankery like with Revolver, adapting classic stories that clash with his
sensibilities like with King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, or just plain doing
what he should know by now isn’t his strong suit like with Aladdin. I bring all
this up because I want to see Ritchie deliver satisfying cinema again, and it’s
why I’m very happy with his latest.
Going back to his Lock Stock/Snatch basics, this is Ritchie
in his comfort zone: A winding, mildly convoluted and crisp crime narrative
with numerous character perspectives, abrasive humour and copious violence for
those who like a little platelet in their lager. With him not trying to aim for
larger commentary, the crudeness and verbosity of his writing only has to stick
the landing in making the characters feel alive, and while his scripting
definitely aids in that, the cast here ain’t half bad either.
Tapping into his preternatural instincts for seeing the
inner hard bastard in a given actor, the casting is genuinely impressive in how
well everyone fits. Matthew McConaughey as the resident weed baron (a take that
would feel embarrassingly outdated, if it didn’t take the modern state of weed
legalisation into account), Jeremy Strong as his prim potential business
partner, Colin Farrell as an Irish boxing coach; solid fits, unsurprisingly.
But when it gets into Charlie Hunnam as the intimidating right-hand man for
McConaughey, Henry Golding as a rival gangster, and Hugh Grant as the perfect blend
of Brit-hard and delicious camp, it really sinks in that these guys aren’t
fucking around.
And on that last note of Hugh Grant, his central place in
the production ends up highlighting what Guy Ritchie is ultimately attempting
with all this. Rather than trying to completely reinvent the wheel on his
trademark style, he instead goes for added refinement, adaptation for a new era
and, most shockingly, his place within that genre. The bulk of the story is
told through the perspective of Grant’s Fletcher, whose commentary is peppered
with the need for action in his storytelling and even quips about how it would
all look as a movie.
He is basically a thinly-veiled and decidedly camper version
of Ritchie himself, right down to the potential to nod to one of his earliest collaborators Dexter Fletcher with the naming. It ends up solidifying his entire aesthetic: He is the
one taking all these different perspectives and sliding them together into a singular
story, spinning yarns about the seedier side of his home country. It’s not just
a reaffirmation of what made his career so damn promising at the start, it’s
also a moment where Ritchie himself seems to have come to terms with it.
I’m
all for ambitious filmmakers, but if there’s one thing that I learnt over the
course of 2019, it’s that ambition means fuck-all without the skill to pull it
off. I’d rather see a simple idea done well than a complex idea done badly, and
because of that, I hold no hesitation in calling this a triumphant return to
form for Guy Ritchie.
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