I had to watch it. I had to. I’m a huge Guy Ritchie fan. I love that snarky British point of view, and the teasers for The Gentleman were so good. I mean, why was there a guy in a chicken costume? Where is that big ass beautiful mansion? Who is the incredibly sexy, incredibly smart, incredibly cool woman in the swank suit and million-dollar haircut?
Her name is Kaya Scodelario and she is fully clothed in every scene.
Which is the thing I’m talking about when I say Ritchie has done something sneaky. The dynamic between Scodelario’s character, Susie Glass, and the other main character, The Duke, played by Theo James (White Lotus, Sandition), is filled with tension. But it’s not overtly sexual. It plays a lot like a will-they-or-won’t-they rom-com trope, but the thing they will or won’t do isn’t the flat fandango. It’s crime. Where we usually are unconsciously urged to root for a couple to hit the sheets, in The Gentleman, we’re all kind of horny for more murder, robberies, triple (quadruple?) crosses, and all the Guy Ritchian crazy town shit we’ve come to know and love since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Which The Gentleman delivers.
Pikers, aristocratic criminals, chavs, a loyal British groundskeeper, tweed, it’s all there. The diversity of the British criminal landscape in all its ludicrous, incredibly entertaining glory. But Eddy Horniman, Duke of something or other, rarely resorts to his fists to solve the endless snafus presented to him. Neither does Susie Glass. He analyzes and then acts. She is already nine steps ahead of him in her analysis, and then delegates. Because Susie Glass is not a Hollywood trope.
Susie Glass is all about good management, economic strategies, and leadership.
She doesn’t need the Duke. She inherits him. Well, she needs his land (spoilers) but the man himself could hole up in his massive house and never see her and it would all be fine. However, entangled they become and on each other they suddenly depend. A lazy writer would introduce love because a lazy writer would think that’s the only relationship between a man and a woman people can understand. But Ritchie ain’t lazy. Ritchie gives us a business relationship that’s twice as compelling as any rom com duo bullshit I’ve seen in the last ten years.
Because Hollywood doesn’t respect you
Hollywood wants your money. They’ll do anything to get it, including whittling every script they get down to the barest skeleton of whatever niche they’re plundering. I thought maybe Mr. and Mrs. Smith would work out because Donald Glover’s no slouch. But it turns into a love story immediately and has a hard time keeping out interest. But I couldn’t get enough of Scodelario and James. Susie Glass is beautiful. Fashionable. Undeniably sexy. But that’s not what’s compelling about her. Those are accoutrements. Costuming. What’s compelling is her brain. Scodelario is brilliant at drawing us in with a raised eyebrow, a widening eye, a look—not to peek down her shirt, but to watch her think.
Which is way sexier than showing skin
In fact, Scodelario barely bares a shoulder through all eight episodes. But you can’t take your eyes off her. Much as you can’t take your eyes off the tension between her and James. It’s a blast. Mr. and Mrs. Smith wishes they had this energy. Scodelario’s greatest scene, however, is her most revealing. Her main love interest is not James, it’s her brother (calm down, Alabama, it’s not like that). She adores him and supports him and when he is hurt, it wrecks her. Scodelario shows this ruin in a scene sans make-up, eyes puffy and red from crying, in sweat-stained workout clothes. Nowhere in the show’s eight episodes is she more hypnotic. Try that, Hollywood.
Theo James does a wonderful job as Glass’s bookend.
Which you expect, because the show is called The Gentleman, but he’s only half the show. In fact, he’s more like 60%. Although both characters pick up a gun at some point, and though they both kill some people, it’s always because it emerges from the plot. This isn’t John Wick. For most of the episodes, the Duke is restrained and keeps his cool. Hell, it’s not his adversaries who drive him to lose his cool.
It’s his idiot brother, a goddam national treasure of pure stupid delight
Played by Daniel Ings (Sex Education, The Marvels); the foil. I almost wrote that Ing’s Freddy Horniman is a perennial fuck-up, but he’s worse. He’s an hourly fuck up. Every time his face appears in the frame, you can bet he’s trailing some kind of impossible drug-fueled death trap that will get everyone killed. It is, in fact, the inciting incident of the entire series. He is a howling maniac of a an elitist snob and I fucking love him.
Watch Kaya Scodalerio in The Gentleman be a goddam boss.
You won’t regret it.