I suppose for future reference, whenever I say it was a double-feature movie weekend, that usually means I’ve seen them back to back in the theater…I live a really exciting life. It’s fun for me anyways, and you all get to walk away knowing more about movies you may never see 🙂
First up was Guy Ritchie’s latest, The Gentlemen. Aside from this being a gangster film calling back to Ritchie’s roots, it also starred a stellar cast including Matthew McConaughey, Henry Golding, Charlie Hunnam, Jeremy Strong, Colin Farrell, and Hugh Grant! It was quite an interesting web of a story, which was mainly told by sleezy reporter, Fletcher (Grant), to Mickey’s (McConaughey) right hand man, Raymond (Hunnam). Mickey wants to sell his highly profitable Mary Jane business to American Matthew Berger so he can spend retirement with his wife. Word gets out, and rival drug dealers want in, so Dry Eye (Golding) starts making threats to Mickey, including getting one of his farms raided by some wrestlers. The wrestlers coach (Farrell) finds out and offers his services to Raymond as a form of payment for his boys’ misdeeds.
We ultimately learn that Matthew was working with Dry Eye to get the price of Mickey’s business down. There are also some other shenanigans along the way, and a bunch of violence. Coming from Guy Ritchie, I would expect nothing less. The dialogue is quick and witty, and all of his characters are gruff and unlikable. There were also enough c-words dropped to last my lifetime, so beware of that. I guess this films really feeds into all the stereotypes, and with only one female lead, I suppose you could also say Ritchie isn’t moving cinema forward, but I like this Ritchie better than the Aladdin version of him.
Following that film, I headed into The Last Full Measure, a true story about a military lawyer trying to get William Pitsenbarger a post humus medal of honor for his acts in saving over sixty men. There is some corruption brought to light along the way, as well as some very emotional scenes with some of Pitsenbarger’s fellow comrades. It was a pretty wonderful cast, with the likes of Peter Fonda (RIP), William Hurt, Christopher Plummer, and Sebastian Stan. This film wasn’t quite my cup of tea, and coming off of The Gentlemen, it was a tough follow.