After Wong Kar-wai filmed "Flowers", Sir is no longer surprised by these veteran film directors making dramas.
No, here comes another one:
Guy Ritchie.
This name has a place that cannot be ignored among fans of Sir's generation.
Not to mention how popular "Two Big Smoking Guns" and "Robbery and Abduction" are in the fan circle, just "The Great Detective Holmes", which was not very optimistic in quality, was also hotly discussed by the public early on because of the behavior of "selling corruption".
But here's the problem.
When we think of Guy Ritchie as a bull X director, he is extremely unstable.
Especially in recent years, there have always been ups and downs like a good work and a bad movie.
After Douban's 8.1 "Secret Agent", he brought "King Arthur" with a score of 6.9, and after "Gentlemen" with a score of 8.3, he gave a score of 6.7 for "Wrath of Man", not to mention last year's two works, "Covenant" 7.4, and "Operation Golden Explosion" only 5.5.
Lian Po is old?
But who would have thought that when he directed a TV series for the first time, people gave praise of Douban 8.1 and IMDB8.2.
And more importantly.
Sir found that this time, Guy Ritchie was also "learning" Wong Kar-wai's "Flowers" methodology, and took out all the elements of previous success at once:
Gentlemen
The Gentlemen
is a remake of his own movie of the same name, but it has little to do with the original film.
It is a spin-off episode.
In the 8-episode TV series, Guy Ritchie not only served as a producer and screenwriter, but also directed the first two episodes himself.
It can be said that the level of participation is extremely high.
Two simple sentences:
If you're expecting Guy Ritchie to return to the level of Two Smoking Guns, that's wishful thinking.
But if you just want to watch a good action crime comedy, this one will definitely satisfy your desires.
Because there's not just a familiar style here.
You can see a complete, "Guy Ritchie Gangster Universe".
01
What will I do to save you, my foolish brother
Do you remember the famous scene in the movie version of "Gentlemen" 5 years ago?
Accompanied by a nursery rhyme "Old Macdonald has a farm, babbling babbling".
The editor-in-chief of the newspaper looked in horror:
A video of yourself mating with a pig.
Now.
Such a famous scene is presented in another look in the drama version.
A nobleman dressed in a rooster costume smacks towards the sky and the courtyard, singing and yelling.
What is sung?
"I shot a guy in the head, babbling and babbling".
That's right, Guy Ritchie is still the same Guy Ritchie.
The story of the drama version of "Gentlemen" still unfolds in a familiar style:
Eddie, the second son of a British prince who served in the army, suddenly received the news of his father's death.
When he returned, he found out.
He actually inherited his father's entire inheritance.
How lucrative?
There is not only a £200 million estate, but also a winery, a village, a yoghurt farm and a dairy......
There is also a drug business with an annual income of £5 million.
Emm……
The world of rich people is indeed not what we can imagine.
In short, the male protagonist's brother, who should have received the inheritance, was completely anxious and furious at home.
Why?
Because he owes £8 million to a Liverpool drug dealer family, and if he doesn't pay it off by the end of the week, he'll have his genitals cut off.
It's equivalent to saying.
This inheritance can save his life.
But the problem is that the landlord's family has no spare money, and although the old duke has a lot of property, he can spend a lot of money, and in the case of the painting hanging at home, it cost millions of pounds just for such a useless ornament.
Time is tight, and there is no cash.
So in order to help his brother repay the money, the male protagonist had to find the female protagonist of this work, Susie Glass, who runs the British cannabis market.
It doesn't matter if you realize that.
The male protagonist, a decent person who originally served in the army, has since stepped into the marijuana empire without looking back.
This is where the story begins.
But just like Guy Ritchie's films, although he sets you up with some dilemmas, he doesn't have much intention to express the struggles of people in difficult situations.
He's just laying the line.
In the drama version of "Gentlemen", the three people each have their own careful thoughts.
The male protagonist wants to solve the immediate difficulties and let the family get out of the drug business, so he responds to the female protagonist's needs, but instead, he is getting deeper and deeper into the drug business.
The female protagonist is in order to win over the male protagonist.,For this reason, constantly arrange some "troubles" for the male protagonist to help.。
And what about the male protagonist's brother?
His idea was simple, since this business is so profitable, why not continue to do it?
But the unexpected happened.
Originally, the heroine found the creditor and reduced the arrears of 8 million to 4 million through negotiations, and only needed the male protagonist's brother to shoot a video in a rooster suit.
But playing a rooster also requires acting skills.
The male protagonist's brother is talented, so after he put on a rooster costume and cooed, the creditor was not satisfied, and humiliated him and asked him to remake, he continued to coo, remake, continue, remake......
Until.
The male protagonist's brother knocked the medicine.
A shot broke the creditor.
But the problem is that the creditor also has an older brother, who is a local gang leader.
Ferocious and unusual.
Since then, the two brothers, Eddie and Freddy, have embarked on the road of no return.
Where the story will eventually go Sir will not spoil it, after all, this is also one of the great pleasures of watching Guy Ritchie's works, but it is worth mentioning that compared with the film version, the drama version has more out of line.
For example, sarcasm:
There is a nobleman in the play, very wealthy, and his house is full of antiques, and it is said that compared to his family's collection, the British Museum is like a trinket shop.
But one day, my father died.
What can you do in order to "appreciate" your family's wealth after death?
He made a will.
Let people dig a hole in their coffin and sink it vertically into the ground.
Leave a half-cut head on the ground.
Outrageous enough, right?
It's not enough.
After his son inherited the family business, he still wants to enter the entertainment industry, and everything is ready, but he still has a little "little habit" that he doesn't want to be known by the public.
And what?
It is to collect Hitler's relics.
Among them, the most important is Hitler's "disappearing egg", which is soaked in formaldehyde and enshrined.
According to him.
This egg was the "origin of Hitler's genius and creativity", and if Hitler had not lost this egg, he might have become another Leonardo da Vinci.
In simple terms.
With this egg, he can conquer the whole world.
Emm……
Let's not be busy laughing, think about it carefully, what is the difference between this so-called symbolic egg and the so-called title of nobility?
Ridiculed in the absurd.
Irony in undisciplined passages.
And because of this.
Even though the ending of the story is considered bland by many people and is suspected of paving the way for the second season, many people are still satisfied in this drama.
After all.
At present, such an "incorrect" story is no longer being told.
02
Gangster Universe
But just like when watching "Flowers", Sir is tired of looking for the "easter eggs" of Wong Kar-wai's past works in the play, for Sir, one of the great pleasures of watching this "Gentlemen" is also to find the Guy Ritchie element in it.
And this is one of them.
The most exciting thing is that it strings together a "Guy Ritchie gangster universe".
For example:
When you hear the name of the male protagonist, what will come to mind?
没错，盖·里奇以前的电影《两杆大烟枪》（Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels）的主角也叫爱迪（Eddie）。
In Two Smoking Guns, Eddie is a combination of the two characters of the older brother Freddie and the younger brother Eddie.
As a talented poker player, he was framed in a game and lost all his money. This results in Eddie and his friends going into a large debt.
Like Eddy in this film, he is the quintessential Guy Ritchie character – their personalities and behaviors are complex and layered, intelligent and witty, and have a sense of humor.
At the same time, they are often in a moral gray area, with both positive and dark sides.
For example.
There is a plot in the play in order to show the male protagonist's "benevolence", which is about the male protagonist in order to give the life of the gangster brother who counted the money, so he went to his house to help him get a passport.
Who knew that another gangster who came to spy on him was discovered.
What to do?
If you don't do anything, he will kill the killer.
Directly solved his life.
You see, in order to save the fate of one gangster, he killed another gangster.
What's even more amazing.
As a nobleman who had never killed anyone, after killing someone, he not only calmly found a "professional" to dispose of the corpse, but also took the wound and attended a dinner party casually.
It is no wonder that some people say that he is a "person who can both control the high-level people of high society and blow out other people's heads without worrying".
This creates a strong contrast between high society and gangster drug lords, which is one of the core charms of this character.
Except for Eddie.
Other gangster characters in "Gentlemen" have also appeared in Guy Ritchie's past works.
For example, John Dixon, a drug dealer in the Liverpool family who lent money, designed to make his brother Fred owe a huge amount of money. He corresponds to Hatch in "Two Big Smoking Guns".
Hatch is a ruthless moneylender who loves to collect antique guns, and it is he who devises the trap to get Eddie from Two Smoking Guns into debt.
Another example is Henry, who organized a boxing match, and he negotiated with Susie to treat Susie's brother unfairly.
The counterpart of Brick Top in "Kidnapping and Swindling" is a ruthless mob boss who also organizes illegal boxing events for a living.
Drugs, smoking guns, debts, boxing, animals, deception, betrayal, exploitation...... It's not hard to see that "Gentlemen" is basically a big collection of Guy Ritchie's gangster elements. The drama version of "Gentlemen" includes the character characteristics of Guy Ritchie's previous works.
This will ecstatic fans who are familiar with Guy Ritchie.
It is also one of the reasons why this drama can achieve a high score of 8.1.
03
High society
So the question is, why does Guy Ritchie have a soft spot for "gentlemen"?
In the past, we know that Guy Ritchie is accustomed to looking at the middle and lower class worlds, such as the boxing promoter, Jewish gem dealer, Russian gangster in "Kidnapping and Swindling", and the thief, gambler, mob boss and drug dealer in "Two Smoking Guns".
It's full of recklessness.
And some of the recent works.
Such as the nobles in "Gentlemen" and the agents in "Ace Agent", each one is more refined than the other.
Even in the behind-the-scenes special of the drama version of "Gentlemen".
We can see that the main creator has spent a lot of energy to reproduce some aristocratic etiquette.
Prepare the right attire.
They even found a real duke's residence as a filming location, and the real duchess and duchess lived there during the filming.
Also thanks to Netflix's generosity.
Guy Ritchie was able to portray his ideal aristocracy so accurately.
The "gentleman" here refers not only to those who were born in the upper class, received a good education, and paid attention to etiquette, but also refers to those who have social resources, social wealth, and social status, and are comfortable in complex social relations, and even outside the common sense of morality and law.
When the elites of the upper class "strayed" into the bottom jungle, they actually revealed their original faces.
The barrel of the gun solves everything.
So you can see that in the drama version of "Gentlemen", after Captain Eddie entered the marijuana empire, killing people at every turn became the norm, wandering between the interests of drug lords and gangsters, deceiving, violent, and shooting.
There can be no civilized dialogue and consultation, only mutual betrayal and hostility.
As the saying goes, murder and arson gold belts, build bridges and pave roads without bones.
It's like Eddie's house has a bunch of shotguns hidden in his house, so he can carry the barrel of the gun to battle at any time.
After entering the violent underclass.
Guy Ritchie is back to the original Guy Ritchie.
Naturally.
As Sir said at the beginning, in the hearts of fans of our generation, Guy Ritchie once had an unshakable status, even comparable to Quentin's achievements back then.
But now.
I have to admit that not only is he no longer as good as Quentin, but even the current 8.1 score of "Gentlemen" is still a breath worse than his previous works.
Especially the ending.
There is a sense of powerlessness that wants to climax, but is helpless to be discouraged.
Sir一度期待他能回复当年神采。
Now it seems.
This has become a luxury.
It's just surprising that Guy Ritchie, who has been reduced to second-rate, even if he recovers half of his breath, shoots a work in his comfort zone.
can still crush most of the similar works.
And that's not it.
Not another, greater regret?
The picture comes from the Internet
Editorial Assistant: Pear