THE GENTLEMEN (US - 2020) Written and directed by Guy Ritchie. Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Colin Farrell, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Tom Wu, Bugzy Malone, Jason Wong, Lyne Renee, Chidi Ajufo, Simon Barker, John Dagleish, Eliot Sumner, Samuel West, Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Tom Rhys Harries, Danny Griffin, Mark Rathbone, Andrew Greenaugh. (R, 113 mins) After a decade of playing the big-budget Hollywood franchise game with Robert Downey Jr.'s two SHERLOCK HOLMES films, the underrated THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., the costly flop KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD, and the live-action ALADDIN, writer/director Guy Ritchie returns to his LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS and SNATCH roots with the twisty, convoluted, and wildly entertaining THE GENTLEMEN. He hasn't revisited these sorts of "fookin' 'ell, mate!" British gangster shenanigans since 2008's middling ROCKNROLLA, but buoyed by a game cast and a gleeful willingness to offend everyone, THE GENTLEMEN manages to be a lot of fun despite Ritchie not really having any new tricks up his sleeve. You could call it LOCK, STOCK 4: ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT, as Matthew McConaughey stars as expat American Mickey Pearson, who came to London from trailer park America with a genius-level IQ and a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford that he blew off when he found being a weed dealer for his rich and spoiled classmates was more lucrative. And in the years since, he's set up a massive empire in the UK covering all facets from production to distribution. He's incredibly wealthy, has a ton of guys on his payroll to do any required dirty work, and he uses the property of lesser-ranking, under-the-radar royals to secretly house his dozen underground facilities in exchange for a cut of the profits.
But Mickey's been in the game a long time and he wants to retire, which brings everyone out of the woodwork in an attempt to buy out his operation, including unscrupulous American billionaire Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong, reuniting with McConaughey after last year's SERENITY triumph) and Dry Eye (Henry Golding), an ambitious underboss with a Chinese mob outfit who's looking to break away from his boss Lord George (Tom Wu). There's also Fletcher (Hugh Grant), a sleazy private eye who's been hired by tabloid publisher Big Dave (Eddie Marsan) to dig up dirt on Mickey after he's snubbed by him at a swanky society gathering, to the delight of onlookers. And Big Dave knows Mickey has connections to distant Royal Family member Lord Pressfield (Samuel West), whose runaway daughter Laura (Eliot Sumner, youngest daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler) is a heroin addict. But Fletcher has his own ideas of taking the information he's gathered and selling it to Ray (Charlie Hunnam), Mickey's loyal right-hand man, occasionally embellishing his findings with some Hollywood bells and whistles in the hope that it could be sold as a script (Ritchie has some meta fun with this aspect, including a bit where the scheming Fletcher meets with a producer who has a 2015 MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. poster in his office). Double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple crosses ensue, with shifting loyalties and unexpected players--including Mickey's take-no-shit wife Rosalind (Michelle Dockery), and Coach (Colin Farrell), a tough Irish bloke who runs a gym for underprivileged kids, and who's pulled into the proceedings when a few of his ne'er-do-wells foolishly decide to steal some of Mickey's product.
In other words, it's pretty much business as usual for old-school Ritchie fans, but it's done with enough style and panache that you won't mind the familiarity, sort-of like listening to a new AC/DC album. It's exactly what you think it is, it strictly adheres to a carved-in-stone formula, and it doesn't fix what isn't broken (unless you really want Ritchie to make another REVOLVER). It's comfort food of sorts if you're a LOCK, STOCK fan...that is, as long as you can still laugh at insensitive jokes (at the expense of pretty much everyone, for instance Fletcher describing Dry Eye as "a Chinese James Bond...with a ricense to kill") and extraordinarily profane dialogue being rattled off by some very bad guys (this may set a new record for the number of times "cunt" is yelled in a movie). The cast is having a blast, particularly Grant, who seems to be doing a scathing Ricky Gervais impression and keeps not-very-subtly hitting on Hunnam's Ray. An underused Farrell gets a few moments to shine in the de facto Vinnie Jones role, but it's really more of an ensemble piece when it's all said and done, despite the focus on Mickey, and even then, McConaughey is offscreen for a couple of long-ish stretches. Twists and turns pile up at an absurd rate near the end, and THE GENTLEMEN is a really good time if vintage Guy Ritchie is what you're after. He also gives you one of the more blatant shout-outs to THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY that you'll ever see, and that's a nice bonus.
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (US - 2015) Directed by Guy Ritchie. Written by Guy Ritchie and Lionel Wigram. Cast: Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Hugh Grant, Alicia Vikander, Jared Harris, Elizabeth Debicki, Luca Calvani, Sylvester Groth, Christian Berkel, Misha Kuznetsov. (PG-13, 116 mins)
With rare exception, the list of 1960s TV shows turned into big-budget event movies in the mid '90s to the early '00s is a pretty dire roll call of failure. For every MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE or THE FUGITIVE, there's a slew of duds like WILD WILD WEST, THE SAINT, I SPY, BEWITCHED, THE MOD SQUAD, GET SMART, LOST IN SPACE, MCHALE'S NAVY, and THE AVENGERS, among others. In an age when every superhero is getting their own movie, 2015 seems a tad late to hop on the TV reboot bandwagon and bring THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. to the big screen as a $75 million summer movie. It's even more surprising that it retains the period 1960s setting during the Cold War. The film was a long-in-gestation project, languishing in development hell for at least a decade, with Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, and Tom Cruise all attached at various times. On the heels of his career reinvention as a Hollywood franchise guy with Robert Downey Jr's SHERLOCK HOLMES films, the former LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS wunderkind Guy Ritchie fashions his U.N.C.L.E. as an extremely enjoyable retro '60s spy movie that's funny while successfully avoiding the camp and kitsch of a straight-up AUSTIN POWERS spoof. Other than some CGI work and some minor quick-cutting in some of the action sequences, Ritchie's U.N.C.L.E. looks and feels like it could've been made in 1965, with the same level of outstanding production design, atmosphere, and attention to detail he brought to his semi-steampunk interpretation of SHERLOCK HOLMES. The fact is, nobody needed a MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. reboot and the idea sounded less than promising, almost like the film was setting itself up to bomb and clean up at the Razzies next spring. There's no reason this thing should be as giddily entertaining as it is, but it turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises of the summer.
The question is, will it matter? The target audience has to be older by default--how many in today's prime multiplex demographic even know what THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. was? The spy series, which starred Robert Vaughn and David McCallum as, respectively, U.N.C.L.E. (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, and Leo G. Carroll as their boss Waverly, aired on NBC from 1964-1968. It was a response to the 007 phenomenon (then hitting its stride with the much-anticipated release of GOLDFINGER, followed by the Bondmania zenith THUNDERBALL in 1965) and even had Ian Fleming onboard as a creative consultant until his death a month before the series premiere. It was so popular that NBC even edited episodes together, padded them with new or unused footage, and released them as feature films that became hits. That's right--U.N.C.L.E. fans went to the theater and paid to see re-edited versions of things they already saw on TV. Ritchie's U.N.C.L.E. serves as an origin story for Solo (MAN OF STEEL's Henry Cavill) and Kuryakin (THE LONE RANGER's Armie Hammer), who begin the film as nemeses. It's 1963, and Solo is in East Berlin to smuggle mechanic Gaby Teller (EX MACHINA's Alicia Vikander) to the west. Gaby is the estranged daughter of Dr. Udo Teller (Christian Berkel), a scientist forced into being a Nazi collaborator during WWII. He's been in the secret employ of the US government but has gone missing and is now held prisoner by megalomaniacal shipping heiress Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki), who's using him to develop a nuclear weapon. Solo and Kuryakin must become reluctant and constantly bickering allies to both protect Gaby and get her in contact with her uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth), who may know of Udo's whereabouts. As they form a begrudging respect and friendship with one another as colleagues, Solo and Kuryakin are also operating under strict orders to obtain Vinciguerra's computer files--and take the other out if the need arises.
THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. is a lighthearted, globetrotting spy outing, filled with witty and occasionally smutty double entendres, great zingers ("For a special agent, you're not having a very special day, are you?") and some quirky action scenes, including one that plays out in the background while Solo relaxes with a quick bite and some wine while sitting in his getaway truck. Hammer does a great job with his thick Russian accent and actually demonstrates some character depth even though Kuryakin is primarily a ball of barely-contained rage. Cavill is having a blast as the cocky, womanizing Solo, not doing a direct impression of Vaughn but beautifully nailing the great character actor's distinct vocal inflections and cadences, uttering his dialogue with a perpetually-arched eyebrow but never taking it over the line into self-aware snark (Hugh Grant plays their eventual boss Waverly, though his role is relatively brief here).Ritchie's U.N.C.L.E. is a breezy, uncomplicated affair that's big on laughs but takes itself seriously when the situation warrants for a nice balance of serious action and intentional laughs. And that may ultimately be its commercial downfall: it's hard for 2015 audiences to accept a period piece like this at face value, without the kitsch and the parody element that an AUSTIN POWERS would bring to the table. It's one thing to wonder if the kids today know what THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. was, but do they even know what the Cold War was? Ritchie's film is terrific entertainment and the kind of movie you'll stop and watch until it's over every time you come across it while channel-surfing as it plays on HBO in perpetuity...but will anybody under 40 even care about this movie right now?
Written and directed by Lana Wachowski & Tom Tykwer & Andy Wachowski. Cast: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Susan Sarandon, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Keith David, David Gyasi, Xun Zhou, Robert Fyfe, Martin Wuttke, Brody Nicholas Lee. (R, 172 mins)
Based on David Mitchell's 2004 novel universally considered unfilmable, CLOUD ATLAS is the kind of insanely ambitious undertaking that I suspect many people will respectfully admire from a distance rather than like. It's a film that's bound to be divisive and not everything about it works, but it's a safe bet that you've never seen anything like it. A collaborative effort between Lana & Andy Wachowski (THE MATRIX) and Tom Tykwer (RUN LOLA RUN), CLOUD ATLAS is one of those "everything is connected" films (in fact, that's the tag line on the poster art), but instead of the usual wallowing in self-absorbed ennui, it's a story that stretches across time, balancing multiple stories and timeframes. It demands patience and attention and yes, it all eventually more or less comes together, though it can be a bit chaotic and messy at times. There's a lot of comparisons one could make (I kept thinking of THE TREE OF LIFE if it was directed by Christopher Nolan), but CLOUD ATLAS is a film that stands uniquely alone.
CLOUD ATLAS simultaneously tells six stories across six time periods and places, and almost all of the main cast appear as different characters in each: in 1849, a lawyer (Jim Sturgess) travels by ship to facilitate a slave deal for his father-in-law. In 1936 Scotland, Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) is hired to assemble pieces of a symphony dictated to him by an aging composer (Jim Broadbent). In 1973 San Francisco, journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) gets in over her head investigating a conspiracy involving a powerful oil company and a nuclear power plant after a chance meeting with an elderly man (James D'Arcy) in a stuck elevator. In 2012 London, a scheming literary agent (Broadbent again) is duped into committing himself to a nursing home while on the run from gangsters to whom he owes a significant amount of money. In 2144 New Seoul, a replicant waitress named Sonmi (Doona Bae) is being interviewed prior to her execution for leading a clone rebellion against the totalitarian status quo. And "100 winters after The Fall" in a post-apocalyptic world, the nomadic Zachry (Tom Hanks) agrees to guide a strange visitor (Berry again) into the mountains.
Team Wachowski handled the 1849/2144/The Fall scenes, while Team Tykwer tackled 1936/1973/2012, working at the same time with two different crews and sharing almost all of the actors, who are often unrecognizable under heavy makeup, or at least playing far against type. Most of the actors handle their multiple assignments well (even when playing different genders and races), but Hanks, largely because he's likable and instantly-recognizable Tom Hanks, does seem a bit out of place and miscast in some of his roles. Having said that, it is amusing in the 2012 segment to see him playing cauliflower-eared, scar-faced thug of the "fookin' ell!" variety, dropping plentiful F-and-C-bombs and throwing a guy off a balcony. Actors often fare better in some segments than others: Hugo Weaving is distracting as a female nurse in 2012, but absolutely terrifying as a demonic figure tormenting Zachry in the Fall. Berry is fine as the crusading 1973 journalist, but as an elderly male Korean doctor under a ton of old-age prosthetics? Not so much. But the stunt casting, for the most part, has a point, and ties into the "connected" them, regardless of any controversial "sensitivity" issues, as odd as it seems in 2012 to see British actors like Sturgess and D'Arcy playing Asians. When's the last time you saw eye makeup like this? Peter Sellers in THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU? Joel Grey in REMO WILLIAMS?
CLOUD ATLAS is the kind of film that offers something for pretty much everyone: drama, comedy, romance, art, high seas adventure, conspiracy/paranoia thriller, dystopian sci-fi, horror. It's an incredible achievement in the sheer scope of what it tries to accomplish, and it mostly succeeds. The filmmakers cut no corners with CLOUD ATLAS, and it's fascinating to watch a visual element in one time frame tie into another, or a line of dialogue in one section that has significance to something that happens in another. As expansively huge as the film is, it's mostly very tight in its construction and rarely loses momentum despite two teams of filmmakers juggling six narratives for nearly three hours.
With CLOUD ATLAS, Tykwer and the Wachowskis reassert themselves as among the most visionary of modern filmmakers, even though they've only achieved fleeting mainstream success since their big breakthroughs. The Wachowskis produced and scriped V FOR VENDETTA, but got otherwise chilly receptions for the disappointing MATRIX sequels, the underappreciated SPEED RACER and the unremarkable NINJA ASSASSIN (which they produced), and also had a hand in attempting to salvage THE INVASION (an uncredited rewrite, and their associate and V FOR VENDETTA/NINJA ASSASSIN director James McTeigue handled uncredited reshoots). Tykwer thus far has yet to enjoy a repeat of the critical and commercial success of his 1999 cult classic RUN LOLA RUN, though 2006's PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER and 2009's THE INTERNATIONAL both deserved better receptions than they got. I don't think CLOUD ATLAS is going to be a big US box office hit (it will likely do better overseas), but it's a complex and often extraordinary, one-of-a-kind film that will likely be discussed and dissected for years to come. While not a perfect film by any means, and one where the technique is perhaps more important than the story, it strikes me as a film that will reveal more layers of detail with repeat viewings.
