Trailer for the series "The Gentlemen"/Netflix
Paraphrasing David Amsalem's infamous speech (or if you really insist, about "behind the bars"), we can say that there are two types of gangsters in the world of culture: there is the gangster who knows he is a gangster.
These are the Vito Corleone and the Tony Sopranos of sorts, people who just look at them to understand that before us stands a criminal with honor.
On the other hand, there is the gangster who does not know he is a gangster, the one who needs an extraordinary moral crisis to learn about his true nature.
Walter White is a classic example.
But the second type has another derivative, comic, extreme, one that takes the fish out of water in the world of crime and turns him - through an absurd chain of mistakes and coincidences - into someone who deserves to be called a gangster in the end.
26 years ago Guy Ritchie made this third type of criminal a hit.
He started with the wonderful "Luke Stock and Two Smoking Canes" and continued with the equally wonderful "Snatch", which includes one of the most underrated performances of Brad Pitt's career.
Ritchie's films highlighted the differences between the British and Italian crime worlds that became the Hollywood standard.
No more fancy suits, cigars and passive-aggressive conversations with verbal cues, but people with more weapons than teeth, an accent that there's no way you'll be able to understand without subtitles, zero tact and a wardrobe based exclusively on sweatpants.
This style created another distinct advantage for Richie: it did not require high budgets.
The roughness and street culture of the heroes and villains was enough to generate enough interest.
It didn't hurt at all that the absolute majority of the players were anonymous (including the legendary Vinnie Jones, who until then was mainly known as one of the biggest scorers in the English football league), and hence the path to handsome profits was short.
But Richie's takeoff speed was only equal to the size of the crash that followed.
Although the films themselves often continued to be successful at the box office, critics and audiences slaughtered his projects for more than a decade.
sexual tension
Theo James, "The Gentlemen"/Christopher Rafael/Netflix
does not get dirty.
Kaya Scodelario, Theo James, The Gentlemen/Christopher Rafael/Netflix
In 2019, after far too many other attempts, Ritchie returned to his roots with The Gentlemen, a crime-action-comedy film about an American marijuana dealer who tries to sell his business in London, and falls into a chain of corruption, blackmail and other attempts to sabotage his plans.
"The Gentlemen" proved that Richie's charm has not yet been lost, and for the first time in years the audience and critics aligned behind the box office success.
In most cases this is where the story should have ended, but we are in the era of Hollywood intellectual property, which ensures that a project never really ends - it just waits for an opportunity to squeeze the remaining juice out of it.
And so we arrived at 2024 and the television adaptation of the five-year-old film into a Netflix series.
On the face of it, not something that sounds like a good idea.
But those who came across "Snatch", the television series based on the cinematic original, experienced the successful transition (in the first season, the second much less) of Ritchie's works to the small screen.
Although he was not part of the production at the time, the ability to develop and deepen the stories and characters did only good for Bizarre, next to the lightness on the trigger and the twists and turns of the plot that characterize his works.
At the center of the television "Gentlemen" is Edward Horniman (Theo James, "The White Lotus"), an officer in the United Nations peacekeeping forces, who is surprisingly chosen to inherit the fortune of his late father, the Duke of Halstad, which includes his sprawling estate over 60,000 acres. The problem is, with the magnificent property came the questionable parts of the duke's legacy. Chief among them is the criminal empire that uses the estate for its thriving marijuana-growing business. And here's another slight problem: the guests are very happy with this connection and have no plans to leave. Which makes Edward as their reluctant new partner.
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Chaotic but also coherent.
Ginacerlo Esposito, "The Gentlemen"/Netflix
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This synopsis happily reveals very little of the actual plot of The Gentlemen, which in the best Ritchie tradition includes twists, complications, and a fun and crazy total madness that complicates the initial setup well into the season's eighth episode.
The good news is that with Richie in his element, the TV platform is helping him shine like in his prime.
Thus the first episodes of the series amaze at a dizzying pace, with the entrance of more and more crazy and strange characters into the cauldron, but with very little exposition before bullet pouches begin to fill the floor.
There are people here who dance in chicken costumes, killer gang leaders who are also devout Christians, greedy rich people who will stop at nothing to get what they want, gypsies who speak in codes that only they understand, boring money launderers, Cuban criminals with a business selling luxury cars - and this is really only a partial list.
The beauty is that the multiplicity of players and interests only adds to the fun instead of complicating it.
"The Gentlemen" manages to tie everyone together in a way that manages to be at the same time chaotic but also coherent, and in some cases even produce plot arcs that come back to bite the heroes after several episodes.
To the violent fun and the heavy accent that are Ritchie's hallmarks, there is also a very successful pairing in the main roles of the series.
Horniman maneuvers against the head of the drug operation in his territory, Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario, forever epic from "Skins"), who is also the daughter of the head of the crime family.
Even though the two are rivals with opposing interests, a chemistry is created between them (and yes, also quite a bit of sexual tension) that is an anchor for the entire series.
Glass doesn't get dirty, she has "people" for every action, while Eddie is one who doesn't trust others to carry out his own tasks, however bloody they may be.
This tension pulls him between a fondness for the dark side of the criminal world and the desire to get rid of this threat to his life and the lives of his family.
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Jay Ritchie's mascot.
Vinnie Jones, "The Gentlemen"/Netflix
The sick evil of streaming series (especially Netflix) is the freedom to fill as many minutes as you want, even if there is no reason for it.
It seems like The Gentlemen would have done great with six 45-minute episodes, but the greed leads to a noticeable belly in the middle of the season.
It's not that "The Gentlemen" stops being fun and silly in them too, but the plot stretches out unnecessarily into subplots that seem to have been created just because there was screen time to fill.
And so the main story of the battle for Eddie's soul and his estate occupy a secondary place unnecessarily.
The very name of the series corresponds with this constant wink of Richie's to criminals of the first type, those with honor.
Although Edward himself is embalmed in luxurious suits and Susie's style is meticulous in every scene, there is nothing gentlemanly or respectable about their conduct.
Not towards each other and certainly not towards the rest of the world.
This complete absence of codes and values makes their every move unpredictable, or at least one that can develop in any possible direction - a feature that definitely contributes to the enjoyment of the plot.
The beauty of "The Gentlemen" lies in being a multi-layered product.
For Ritchie fans, the reunion with gypsies, heavily accented criminals, and of course Vinnie Jones, will feel like the heyday of his great films.
But for those who have never experienced Richie's works, there is no real barrier to enjoying all this goodness.
The photogenic violence of "The Gentlemen", in the strengthening of the considerable budget that fell into his hands thanks to the connection with Netflix, combines a crazy pace with spectacular photography and rhythmic and fun editing.
"The Gentlemen" is the proof that sometimes (but really only sometimes) stories that ended are worth more than what they revealed to us in the original.
This does not mean that every time Netflix tries (and it will try) to do it, it will also succeed, but these are already future concerns.
In the meantime, if you're tired of criminals with honor and prestige, you have the opportunity to get to know some dishonorable bastards.
All episodes of the first season of "The Gentlemen" are available on Netflix.
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