The Gentlemen

Ritchie’s screenplay laughs in the face of the “show, don’t tell” maxim and when a character asks, “Why are you wasting our time?”, you wonder the same thing.

While Ritchie’s gangsters are as impatient as ever, preferring to settle an argument with a gun rather than a conversation, he steers clear of sadism. It’s his wit which energises the film and shapes the characters – with a lot of help from his actors. A couple of them have talked happily of his habit of encouraging them to improvise, along with his nimbleness in being able to re-write a scene in the space of a day. That’s the kind of zest which permeates the whole film.

Mid-career, Ritchie is right back where he started. If you think that's a good thing, then have at it.

What's missing is any of the genuine grittiness that made Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels worth paying attention to in the first place. The Gentlemen feels long past its sell-by-date.

It certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for those who missed the old Guy Ritchie and his verbose, iconic gangsters, The Gentlemen will go down better than a pint and a pickled egg.

While recycling the familiar, leaning on stylised violence and unleashing a flurry of self-satisfied dialogue have long been the writer/director's specialty, this isn't a return to form.

What it lacks in freshness and depth, The Gentlemen certainly makes up for in cartoon-y bluster and fun details. Welcome home, Mr. Ritchie.

Ritchie's homecoming is a fairly familiar affair, but also refreshingly funny and deftly plotted, with more witty lines and less boorish machismo than his early work.

A knockabout all-star return to the underworld that feigns to remind us who its director really is, but feels, in most respects, like a hedging of bets.

The Gentlemen is a mid-life-crisis movie, and I don't mean that as a criticism: it's keen to give its beloved old guard the last laugh in a fast-changing world.

Ritchie has made an entertaining return to his mockney roots.