The Invisible Man (2020) * * *

Directed by:  Leigh Whannell

Starring:  Elisabeth Moss, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Harriet Dyer, Aldis Hodge, Michael Dorman, Storm Reid

Adrian Griffin takes the stalking of his ex to levels never before seen (pun not intended) in The Invisible Man, a cold, dark, and eerily effective take on the classic horror tale.    The Invisible Man in this case is Adrian (Jackson-Cohen), whose girlfriend Cecelia (Moss) flees from their Northern California palace in the middle of the night after drugging him.   According to Cecelia, the relationship was abusive, with Adrian controlling every aspect of her life.    She hides out with her cop friend James (Hodge), a single dad with a teenage daughter Cecelia adores.    Adrian doesn't know where James lives, but Cecelia is still terrified to venture outside for fear of being kidnapped by Adrian and returned to her former life. 

About two weeks after leaving Adrian, Cecelia's sister (Dyer) brings comforting news:  Adrian has committed suicide, and furthermore, Adrian left Cecelia five million dollars in his will.    There is a catch, and the catch is Adrian may not be dead after all.   Inexplicable things start happening to Cecelia which make her question her own reality, such as her breakfast being burned, her covers pulled off her in the middle of the night, and then being thrown and dragged around a room by her hair by seemingly no one.    Cecelia deduces that Adrian, a genius who made his fortune in optics, has found a way to make himself invisible.   Her sister and James don't believe her, because, how could they?    Such a theory is preposterous, isn't it?

The Invisible Man starts a bit slowly, but gains traction and steam after the first two plodding sequences in which Adrian (or not) meticulously stalks Cecelia.    Since Adrian was only seen briefly in the opening moments of the movie, we have to accept Cecelia's version of their relationship, but can it be believed?   Did Cecelia read Adrian wrong?   The Invisible Man plants those seeds of doubt by not showing us too much of Adrian, so his name and reputation casts a long shadow over the events.

Upon reflection, there are plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.   Cecelia is able to discover the truth of the situation with relative ease when going back to Adrian's former home.    If Adrian were as brilliant as he was purported to be, wouldn't he change the security codes on his house?   And who exactly fed the dog in the weeks following Adrian's reported suicide?   No matter, because Elisabeth Moss makes a sympathetic hero whose world is crumbling thanks to an ex who can't stop making her life miserable even from beyond the grave.   The camera seems to stalk Cecelia, invading her space, and never allowing her room to breathe.   Her home with Adrian is a museum with open windows overlooking the sea which barely feels lived in.  If Patrick Bateman of American Psycho owned a California home instead of a Manhattan apartment, it would look and feel like this place. 

All of these touches add up to a suspenseful thriller which doesn't insult the audience's intelligence, but plays that audience (and Cecelia) like a finely tuned piano.   Hitchcock would've loved The Invisible Man, and maybe could have even made it once upon a time.

Hunters (2020) * * * (TV Series on Amazon Prime)

Starring:  Logan Lerman, Al Pacino, Josh Radnor, Dylan Baker, Lena Olin, Greg Austin, Saul Rubinek, Carol Kane, Kate Mulvany, Tiffany Boone, Jerrika Hinton, Jeannie Berlin, Louis Ozawa

Hunters is Tarantinoesque in its form, delivery, and tweaking of history as either a plot swerve or just because it can.    Those who aren't fans of grotesque violence should look elsewhere for their entertainment.    Does it have uneven patches?   Yes.    Are some of the gimmicky bits used as comic relief a bit over the top?   Yes.   Do some of the characters suffer from selective morality by mowing down nameless Nazi soldiers at will, but pausing to consider the moral implications when it comes time to kill the bigwigs?   Yes, and that can be annoying.    But the rest of Hunters flies past those pesky blind spots with its byzantine plot which at first seems so simple, but grows into something bigger than one season could handle.

Hunters opens in 1977 America where the nation's Under Secretary of State Biff Simpson (Baker) is holding a seemingly innocuous cookout with his family and friends.    Biff boasts about having the ear of President Carter and loves his life, until a Jewish woman arrives with husband in tow who quivers at the sight of Biff.   She cries and screams that Biff is a monster; accusing him of being a Nazi death camp commandant.    Biff denies the claims at first, but soon a bullet in the heads of all of the party guests leaves no doubt about Biff's former identity.    Biff has been a Nazi mole in the government for years, and he is but one part of a massive plot hatched by displaced Nazis to begin "The Fourth Reich".  The crumbling of the Third Reich in 1945 serves to fuel the Nazi desire to reign supreme again.

Cut to Brooklyn, where a teenage Jewish kid named Jonah (Lerman) is soon a witness to the murder of his beloved grandmother (Berlin), a Holocaust survivor, in cold blood in their home.    Seeking vengeance, Jonah crosses path with an old family friend, rich Jewish power broker Meyer Offerman (Pacino), who slowly admits Jonah into his own family of Nazi hunters who seek out and wipe out some of the Nazis who have escaped to America.     Their methods aren't pretty.   One former Nazi scientist is gassed in her own shower in Florida, while others are dispensed with equal cruelty.

Meyer's group is a bunch of outsiders who have one thing in common: their hatred for Nazis and their desire to dispense ugly justice.    There's Sister Harriet (Mulvany),a former MI-6 operative disguised as (I think) a nun.    Also aboard is Lonny Flash (Radnor), a struggling Jewish actor whose new employment opportunity is killing Nazis, old married couple Murray and Mindy (Rubinek and Kane) whose child was coldly shot to death in a concentration camp, Roxy (Boone), a black woman who could easily pass for Cleopatra Jones, Joe (Ozawa), a Japanese-American Vietnam vet with lethal skills, and of course Meyer himself, who funds the operation and takes a hands-on approach to his work.    He isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

Jonah struggles with his conscience as he dives deeper into his new line of work, which falls into the selective morality stuff I mentioned earlier.    This can be draining.   You're either in or you're out, kid.   The haunted conscience thing is distracting.    Hunters, though, doesn't allow much time to dwell on such trivialities.    The Nazis are led by The Colonel (Olin), who coldly and calculatingly runs the show from the shadows.    One of her favorite operatives is Travis (Austin), an American neo-Nazi who is frighteningly passionate about the Nazi cause.    This guy is ruthless and scary, with steely, cold, and unforgiving eyes.

The vast Nazi plot involves their use of a shell corporation to distribute corn syrup to the masses, killing millions in the process and making it easier to conquer those left behind.    The Hunters' job is to halt the said plot, which is hard enough without an FBI agent (Hinton) snooping around wondering why senior citizens who immigrated from Europe are suddenly dropping dead.    Hunters has a distinct feel for its time and place, a period in which it was still very possible to find Nazis who were fugitives from justice. 

Al Pacino, now 79, relishes his big moments as Meyer, who had a complex previous relationship with Jonah's grandmother and is also a concentration camp survivor.   Some of the more grueling moments of Hunters are the flashbacks to the camps, which provides context to the current day hunters' actions.  Their methods of dispatching the Nazis are Inglourious Basterds times ten.   I was halfway expecting to see Brad Pitt appear to help out Meyer's gang.

Despite any momentary misgivings, Hunters gives us ultimately evil villains with no redeeming qualities whom we would like to see vanquished, and a group of colorful protagonists whose mission is to do the vanquishing.    There is a swerve in the season finale which I still can't fully agree with.  It is simply too contrived to be fully effective, and then in Hunters fashion, another swerve comes along to make us forget all about the first one.   Your mileage may vary on how much violence you can stand, but Hunters is never boring. 

Call of the Wild (2020) * *

Directed by: Chris Sanders

Starring:  Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Omar Sy, Karen Gillan

I watched The Call of the Wild in a theater full of families with kids, and it became apparent early on this is not a movie for kids.   It is glum and depressing to watch what happens to the big lovable Buck, the CGI dog at the center of the movie.    The CGI technology didn't look promising in the trailer, but looks more seamless in the finished product.    I also found Harrison Ford's performance touching and poignant, while managing not to be upstaged by Buck.

John Thornton (Ford) narrates Buck's story, which begins in a small circa 1890's California town.  Buck is a wild, rambunctious giant of a dog who doesn't realize his own strength when he runs through the town knocking things over.  He's a bull in a china shop belonging to the family of a local judge.  After ruining a party the judge is throwing, he is left outside that night where he is kidnapped and sold to a dogsled route owner in the Yukon.   Buck is made a part of the dogsled mail route team run by the kindly Perreault (Sy), and Buck soon assumes leadership of the team after battling the dictatorial lead dog whom the other dogs fear. 

Soon enough, Buck's run with the dogsled team comes to an end, with the team being purchased by  sinister gold prospector Hal (Stevens), a cruel taskmaster who beats Buck and the dogs into exhaustion, only to be saved by John.   Well, Buck is saved by John.   What happens to the rest of the team remains off screen.    John decides to light out for the territories with Buck in tow, and the vengeful Hal following on their trail.    Hal, with his bug eyes and handlebar mustache, looks like an exaggerated silent movie villain.   John, whose marriage ended after the death of his son (how long ago did that happen?), is borderline alcoholic, but treats Buck with dignity.

As John strikes gold in a small Yukon stream, Buck befriends a pack of timber wolves and learns his place in the world resides with his own kind and not John.   We are supposed to be happy for him, I guess, and the subplots are resolved all right, but The Call of the Wild is not uplifting fare.   Based on Jack London's 1903 novel, I can't say how faithful the movie is to the source material, but this is some pretty maudlin stuff.    Just because a movie's central character is a pooch doesn't mean it is suitable for children. 

Fantasy Island (2020) * * 1/2

Directed by:  Jeff Wadlow

Starring:  Lucy Hale, Michael Pena, Jimmy O. Yang, Michael Rooker, Austin Stowell, Maggie Q, Portia Doubleday, Ryan Hansen, Parisa Fitz-Hunley

My expectations weren't high for Fantasy Island going in.   I had seen the trailer, and aside from the momentary curiosity of seeing a famous late 1970s TV show turned into a horror film, Fantasy Island had the look and feel of a dud.   Fortunately, my job is to actually see the movies to review them, and Fantasy Island wasn't half-bad.   The premise is mined for some intriguing possibilities, and while the movie eventually succumbs under the weight of explaining how an island has the power to grant you a fantasy, most of it is schlocky fun.

Most of the target audience of Fantasy Island might not have any idea that it is based it on a forty-plus year old television show.    I admit I never saw an episode, but the white-suited Mr. Roark (played by the ever-debonair Ricardo Montalban) and his diminutive white-clad sidekick Tattoo (Herve Villechaize) who shouts "De plane, de plane" are part of the 70's cultural lexicon.   There is no tattoo in the 2020 film version, although numerous people shout "the plane!"

A group of twenty and thirtysomethings are flown to Fantasy Island, where according to their host Mr. Roark (Pena), each person is allowed one fantasy and the fantasy must be seen through to its inevitable conclusion.   This is not meant to be comforting.   A twentyish woman named Melanie (Hale) fantasizes about gaining revenge on the girl in high school who tormented her almost daily.   Lo and behold, the bully materializes strapped to a chair in preparation for torture.    Another woman named Gwen (Maggie Q) fantasizes about having another chance to accept a marriage proposal she turned down five years ago.   What do you know?   The man she shot down is now in the island restaurant and, to him, it is the night from five years ago.  

There are other people with other fantasies, and they all intertwine thanks to the mysterious island which has the power to grant wishes.   As one character puts it, "Mr. Roark is the genie and the island is the lamp,"   We have our share of plot twists and swerves, and Michael Pena, being the great actor he is, gives us at some hidden dimensions to Mr. Roark.    The Maggie Q fantasy delivers some poignancy, while the others devolve into killings and shoot-'em-ups.   This is all delivered unevenly at times, but at other times Fantasy Island genuinely held my interest...which is far better than I anticipated.    I know this is faint praise, but it beats no praise at all.

Tuesdays with Morrie (1999) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Mick Jackson

Starring:  Jack Lemmon, Hank Azaria, Caroline Aaron, Wendy Moniz, Bonnie Bartlett, John Carroll Lynch, Kyle Sullivan

"Death ends a life, not a relationship," is one of the many profound statements dying professor Morrie Schwartz (Lemmon) has for his friend and favorite student Mitch Albom (Azaria), who is so wrapped up in his career he barely has time to sleep let alone smell the roses.   Based on Albom's autobiographical novel, Tuesdays with Morrie is an unabashed tearjerker that sets out what it wants to accomplish: to make you choke up, tear, and think a little.  

Morrie is thankfully not presented as a secular saint or a Yoda-like person who has plenty of wise insights to pass along to we mere mortals.    That would've made him a bore.   Instead, we see a man who bravely faces his ALS death sentence with humor and grace in front of others, but in the middle of the night, he cries himself to sleep as he processes his own fear and anger at his fate.    His wife Charlotte (Bartlett) lies next to him, and if Tuesdays with Morrie has a gaping blind spot, it's how little Morrie's family is seen.    Oh, we see Charlotte on occasion, acting as a liaison to tell Mitch (and us) how well or unwell Morrie is feeling today, but how is this affecting her?   Aside from these superficial appearances, we can only surmise.    Morrie's own children appear in only two scenes, but are otherwise shuffled off so Mitch and Morrie can do their thing when they meet every Tuesday.

Tuesdays with Morrie, however, more than makes up for these deficiencies with some powerful moments.    We meet Morrie as an older man who enjoys life to the fullest.   He eats, he dances (albeit sans Charlotte) until one day he collapses trying to get into his car.    His body is starting to fail him, although his mind is as sharp as ever.    Mitch, on the other hand, is forever running from one place to another, trying to meet the next deadline and spread himself thin with a newspaper column and television obligations.    His relationship with his girlfriend Janine (Moniz) plays out mostly over the phone, and Janine is growing tired of rarely seeing Mitch.   And when she and Mitch are in the same room, he is working and promising they will go out to dinner if she just gives him five more minutes.

Mitch once promised Morrie he would visit him after he graduated from college, but life got in the way, and Mitch finds out by sheer good fortune about Morrie's condition after seeing a Nightline story about him.   A guilty Mitch visits Morrie at his home near Boston, and Mitch manages to visit Morrie each Tuesday.   Morrie senses right away how Mitch's career drive has left him unhappy and unfulfilled.    Mitch has lost the ability to connect to others, and Morrie makes it his final act of kindness to help Mitch right his ship.

Tuesdays with Morrie successfully juxtaposes the frantic pace of Mitch's life with the serenity of Morrie's.    Morrie faces his deteriorating health as best he can, but the death of his young mother during his childhood still haunts him, as well as trying to understand his cold, distant father years after his death.    Morrie declares he will not die alone as his father did, but surrounded by his family, peace, and love.    He wants Mitch not to be alone also, and makes Mitch see how he uses his professional life to push away those who matter the most to him.

The movie is for all intents and purposes a two-man show, with two wonderful actors working with easy, unforced chemistry.    This isn't a one-way street, in which Mitch is the only one affected by their relationship.    Morrie is also positively affected.   His meetings with Mitch give him something to look forward to, and may even give him enough drive to prolong his life for at least a little while longer.    Hank Azaria is given the unenviable task of working alongside the legendary Jack Lemmon, and he is more than capable of performing that task.   Lemmon remains among my personal top five best actors.  Like Tom Hanks or Jimmy Stewart, he is relatable, human, and we will follow him into hell.    Very few actors are able to take us along for such a ride.    Lemmon died in 2001, with Tuesdays with Morrie being among his final roles, and Morrie Schwartz is someone almost tailor-made for Lemmon's strengths as an actor.    Morrie is not a one-dimensional dying man who spouts banal profundities on cue, but someone with a deep, subtle insight into human nature to which we bear witness.   What a treasure.  What an actor.   I miss him.

Downhill (2020) * *

Directed by:  Nat Faxon and Jim Rash

Starring:  Will Ferrell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Miranda Otto, Zach Woods, Zoe Chao, Giulio Beruti

Downhill is neither fish nor fowl.   It's a dramedy about a deep chasm opening up for a longtime married couple during a ski trip to Austria.   It isn't particularly funny, deep, dramatic, or much of anything.   It's just there. 

SNL alums Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus star as Pete and Billie, a seemingly happy couple skiing on the slopes of the Austrian Alps with their two kids, who may not like skiing as much as their parents.    One day, the marriage is tested when a controlled explosion on a mountainside forces an avalanche which doesn't simply blow by the ski resort.   Snow rumbles onto a small restaurant deck, and Pete decides to save himself and his phone and make a run for it, leaving the wife and kids to grasp onto each other in a potentially deadly situation.    Turns out, the avalanche didn't do much except blow snow everywhere, but that doesn't mean Pete's act of cowardice is any less monumental in Billie's eyes and their kids'.   Can they really trust Pete going forward?

I was reminded of the Seinfeld episode in which George bowls over kids and an elderly woman in a walker to escape an apartment fire.    Pete didn't run over any old ladies, but we see where his head's at.  He is selfish at his core, more interested in sitting in the bathroom texting his friends and inviting one couple to drop in on his vacation without his wife's permission.    This is likely because his friends interest him more than his family.   Both Billie and Pete are going through the motions with the kids, with Billie at least putting up more of a fight to save the family dynamic.

Downhill never generates enough laughs or insight.   A pushy hotel employee named Charlotte (Otto) solely exists to annihilate the couple's social boundaries and tiresomely point out Americans' supposedly stiff attitude towards sex.   Other than as an attempt to generate cheap laughs, what purpose does Charlotte serve in all of this?

Pete's attempts to justify his act or even to shed doubt on Billie's recollection of the event only muddies the waters, but this is all pretty thin soup.   There isn't a lot at stake here emotionally or comically to keep us caring all that much.   Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus do what they can with the skimpy material, and if you like snow-covered mountains, this movie is for you.    There is one scene or two where the actors are clearly standing in front of a green screen, but no matter, there is lots of skiing to be done.   The film's title sums up the moviegoer experience after the first ten minutes or so.

Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emanicipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) * *

Directed by:  Cathy Yan

Starring:  Margot Robbie, Rosie Perez, Ewan McGregor, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Ella Jay Basco, Chris Messina

Margot Robbie makes someone like Harley Quinn tolerable.   We were first introduced to the sexy sociopath in the depressing Suicide Squad.   In that unfortunate DC Comics entry, Harley Quinn is the former Harleen Quinzel, a Gotham psychologist who goes crazy after taking on Joker as one of her patients.   She falls for him and becomes his partner-in-crime.   The Joker in Suicide Squad (Jared Leto) would never be mistaken for Heath Ledger's or Joaquin Phoenix's version of the supervillain.  

Joker thankfully doesn't show up in Birds of Prey because Harley sadly reports to us that she and J have called it quits.    It sounds like a less than mutual decision, but there you have it.    Without Joker as her partner, Harley is left on her own to battle enemies who are salivating to make her dead.    Among them is nightclub owner Roman Sionis (McGregor), who wants to take possession of a special jewel in the possession of a twelve-year-old pickpocket (Basco).   In order to avoid being killed by the hot-tempered Roman, Harley agrees to capture the pickpocket but instead finds herself protecting the lad.    

The other birds of prey in the film's field of view are Black Canary (Smollett-Bell), a singer at Roman's club who becomes his driver, the mysterious Huntress (Winstead), who kills off Roman's henchmen with a crossbow, and Detective Renee Montoya (Perez), who is trying to put Roman behind bars (as well as Harley and the Huntress).   Let's be clear, this is Harley Quinn's movie.   The other characters aren't developed enough to match our interest in Harley.   

Even Harley's energy begins to fade, and by the end, we have the four ladies and the pre-teen battling nameless, personality-less thugs who exist only to be offed by the women in ways John Wick might envy.   Birds of Prey doesn't even provide us with a satisfactory villain.   McGregor's Roman is a spoiled rich kid with a wicked temper, but even when he puts on a black mask and becomes Black Mask, he doesn't possess any special powers or intelligence for us to believe he can actually defeat Harley.    Why even bother with the mask?   At least if the mask turned Ewan McGregor into Jim Carrey, we might have something here.    

2020 Oscars Recap

I admit, I didn't see the Parasite train coming when it barreled through the 2020 Oscars ceremony last Sunday night.    Parasite won four Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature.    It became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture.    As a result, I finished a mediocre 4 for 8 in my Oscar picks.   I expected to bat .1000, but that will have to be next year.    Here are the highlights and mostly lowlights of the event.

*  For the second year in a row, there was no host, although Chris Rock and Steve Martin delivered a hit-and-miss monologue following the opening number by Janelle Monae.    Last year's show clocked in at about three hours, ten minutes.    This year, the show ran twenty minutes longer, for reasons I will specify shortly.    The telecast was sluggish, with Parasite's upset wins providing some late spark.
I would not recommend hiring a host next year.   When you have a host, you have to give the host something to do, and that adds to a longer show time and forgettable bits. 

*  The opening number by Janelle Monae was odd.   There is no doubting Monae's talent, but this showcase was just...off.

*  Why do we have Beanie Feldstein and George McKay introducing other presenters?   Beanie Feldstein introduced Mindy Kaling.   Is Mindy Kaling that much higher up on the food chain than Beanie Feldstein?

*  Why, oh why, did they forsake the individual clips of acting nominees for a montage of their performances?    Bring back the clips next year!   Don't fix what isn't broken.

*  Enough with the banter between presenters.   The faux embarrassment and outrage performed by Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph (presumably over Greta Gerwig's defeat in the Adapted Screenplay category) went on forever, and soon the crowd was bestowing mercy laughs on the unfortunate presenters.   

*  Turns out Luke Perry and a couple other notables were omitted from the In Memoriam segment; an annual tradition these days.   Luke Perry was featured in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, which was only nominated for Best Picture and eight other Oscars THIS YEAR.   In the internet age, there is no excuse to leave anyone off this list.    I'm sure I will repeat myself next year to no avail.   On a positive note, Billie Eilish gave us a soulful rendition of Yesterday.

*   No surprises in the acting categories and these awards were more or less deserved.  

*   Was it me, or could I barely hear Randy Newman and Elton John singing because the accompanying music was that much louder?  

*    A mid-show hip hop recap?   Did we need that?  At least there was no full show recap at the end. 

*    A needless montage of famous songs from movies concludes with a surprise performance from Eminem of "Lose Yourself", which won him the Oscar...in 2003.    Eminem did not appear on the telecast to perform the song or accept his Oscar in person.   Why did he finally decide to perform it seventeen years later?    Your guess is as good as mine.

*  1917 won the Director's Guild award for Sam Mendes and the Producer's Guild award for Best Feature film, but came up empty-handed on both.   The movie at least won three Oscars, all in technical categories, while Martin Scorsese's The Irishman came up 0 for 10. 

*   Bong Joon Ho, through an interpreter, gave a gracious Best Director speech honoring heroes Martin Scorsese (who received an impromptu standing ovation) and Quentin Tarantino.    Ho is surely a student of film in the way Scorsese and Tarantino famously are. 

The two steps forward taken last year has resulted in three steps backward this year.   Maybe the Oscar telecast is simply meant to be a slog we must endure as movie fans.    I watch every year, even though I know the show quality will be substandard, because that is what I do.  





*  

The Gentlemen (2020) * * *

Directed by:  Guy Ritchie

Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Colin Farrell, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Eddie Marsan, Hugh Grant, Jeremy Strong, Jason Wong

In The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie doesn't overrun the story with excessive style.   He has constructed an amusing, light (relatively speaking) crime comedy and allows it to breathe.    Ritchie has visited this territory before, with Snatch as the most famous example, but The Gentlemen is his most successful venture into crime by far.

There are many characters, but following The Gentlemen is easy.   As it opens, greedy private eye Fletcher (Grant) awaits the late night arrival of Raymond (Hunnam) at home and lays out his plan to blackmail Raymond's boss, England's biggest marijuana distributor Mickey Pearson (McConaughey), into paying him off to keep quiet about Pearson's criminal activity which could land him in prison or worse have him killed.    Fletcher plans to reveal everything in a screenplay he plans to pitch all over Hollywood, unless Mickey pays him serious hush money.  

Mickey is looking to get out of the weed business and retire to spend more time with his wife Rosalind (Dockery), who one could easily mistake for Lady Macbeth.   He has a potential suitor in Kingpin Matthew (Strong), and after a deal is done in principle, an up and coming crime lord named Dry Eye (Golding) enters with his own offer.   Well, not really an offer, but more of a demand for Mickey to kill the deal with Matthew or be killed himself.  

Mickey may be looking to retire, but that doesn't mean he's going soft.   With help from the loyal Raymond, Mickey discovers an even bigger plot against him while playing everything like a chess master.    He sees two moves ahead and acts accordingly.    Yes, he is a criminal, but he deals in weed, which in his estimation is far less destructive than opioids, and he is loyal to his wife and his employees.    As far as crime lords go, he is a pretty decent guy.

No need to reveal what happens from here.   Part of the fun of The Gentlemen is navigating the twists and turns of a story which seems simple at first, but draws out complexities in the people who occupy it.   Ritchie doesn't resort to camera trickery which draws attention away from the story.    With such capable performers at his disposal who are clearly enjoying themselves, Ritchie makes the wise decision to back off on the heavily stylization which has plagued some of his more recent efforts.   Guy Ritchie isn't the story here, and it is instead a joy to watch the actual story unfold.