Jorge Loser
Updated Monday, March 11, 2024-9:30 p.m.
British director
Guy Ritchie
returns to television by turning his film
The Gentlemen
(2019) into a new
Netflix
series of the same name -
The Gentleman
- which wants to expand on the success he achieved at the box office, where he achieved 115 million dollars that encouraged him to develop an episodic format within that world that has been brewing for four years.
With many links threaded between the two products throughout its eight chapters, this type of
spin off
presents the vicissitudes of Eddie Horniman, the heir to a large family empire who discovers that cannabis, one of the key pieces, is grown on his farm. of Mickey Pearson's business, the boss played by
Matthew McConaughey
in the film.
This ends up trapping the young man played by
Theo James
, the actor known for
The White Lotus
, in the criminal underworld , who goes from aristocrat to criminal when he discovers that his wealth was achieved in a less than honest way.
And although at first he wants to get away from this underworld, as the series progresses, the appeal of the gangster lifestyle only grows.
According to James, his character believes he would never fall into the underworld lifestyle: "He is a moral person who is trying to bring order when he sees that his family is out of control and, as he descends into chaos, when the elixir of power and criminality begin to poison him,
he realizes that the old way of thinking about power, represented in the British aristocracy, has vanished
, the true power lies in the British citizens and the prosperity achieved through crime.
Ritchie created, produced and wrote the series, as well as directing the first two episodes, and in it he delves into familiar territory:
the British criminal underworld
seen in his first two films,
Lock & Stock
and
Snatch. diamonds
.
Daniel Ings
confirms that the veteran author's participation went beyond spending a couple of days on
set
: "From filming to editing,
he was very involved in all the other episodes
, but when he was not behind the camera we had to Making sure that his DNA was in every shot, keeping his touch elevated without being pastiche, never abandoning the hilarity, but that it was dark enough, we established that balance between darkness and humor and when we got it, we maintained it."
The difference between watching a movie from a couple of hours to eight is also a challenge in maintaining the interest of the characters, so the two actors tried to maintain a level of reality within the relationship between brothers, a family dynamic that is It felt real and that is the key to making it work.
James acknowledges that polishing this relationship "was difficult, honestly, because a lot of the scenes between the brothers were cut, we worked very hard on it, but then there is that depth for both of them, it was necessary for their motivations to make sense, it helps to believe that these two brothers love and hate each other. It's about reconciling two different worlds and those kinds of resentments between brothers have been festering for years."
This relationship between heir brothers and the disputes over leadership in large families seems to ride on the expansive wave of
Succession
that series of other genres have also surfed such as
The Fall of the House of Usher
, also on Netflix, but in reality
The Gentlemen
could be aimed at fans of other gangster series such as
The Sopranos
or
Gomorrah
.
For James, the main difference with all of them is "the comedy and augmented reality, the image of exaggerated aristocracy, with rich gangsters in immaculate suits and caricature in search of fun.
The violence can be explosive and wild, but relatively safe because it has a humorous intention
.
Indeed, there is no shortage of blood in the series, but even being a proposal for adults, there is a crazy element that attenuates the seriousness of some consequences of that violence.
Part of that differential key is, of course, Ritchie's personality present in each shot, with an inescapable Britishness that, for Ings, "
is a kind of high-intensity zoom of British society, of the obsession with social classes
and , in a way, how the British are seen around the world. No one here has contact with the royal family or the levels of aristocracy that we are presenting, but there are other people who enjoy seeing how the English are seen like having tea and pastries, there is something surprising about the love of that syncretic aspect of Britishness.
An appreciation increasingly distorted by the way in which Brexit has distanced the United Kingdom from the traditional European perception, but which culminates in the global obsession with the royal family.
Because
The Gentlemen
also ends up assimilating itself to
that cultural trend of "
eat the rich
" that productions like
The Menu
are producing - the casting choice of Theo James after
The White Lotus
does not seem causal
- and the most important question The tricky question he raises is what would happen if these criminals were actually the British aristocracy, something that James specifies by stating that the infrastructure of gangster families is not that different from that of high society.
"The lack of clarity between the rich and the criminals is one of the symbols and part of the fun of the series, as if the bourgeoisie were the original gangsters. They control the land, they control the judiciary, they control, you know, elements of the society that can be passed down from generation to generation to a new successor. Dan calls the royal family
The Firm
, and we all know what happens in the royal family, it is somehow established as the Italian mafia family. There are the bosses, the murderers, etc..."