Extremely enjoyable. A quite basic plot but of course convoluted in presentation, with Ritchiean bravura; the joy of it is very catching – one feels that Ritchie was probably chuckling as he wrote the script, and there’s a similar sense of ebullience from the entire cast. The characters and casting elevate this otherwise standard film: Matthew McConaughey is a perfectly-cast crime boss (ruthless and human), Charlie Hunnam is a likeable lieutenant, and there are two excellent surprises with Hugh Grant as a sleazy blackmailer (by turns terrified and gloating) and Colin Farrell as a mythic Irish Londoner – down-to-earth bad boy turned into a local boxing gym mentor.

It has a pleasing sense of structural elaboration and fractal harmony. So for all the Ritchiean chaos, I note that one can apply Vox Day’s Social-Sexual Hierarchy quite well:

Matthew McConaughey’s boss Michael Pearson – Alpha

Charlie Hunnam’s Raymond – Bravo

Hugh Grant’s Fletcher – Gamma

Colin Farrell’s Coach – Sigma

with various stolid Delta henchmen

I see it as a film about male dynamics and loyalty, and a man’s own standards of masculinity and virtue – their own sense of what it is to be a “gentleman”. The etymology of gentle:

early 13c., gentile, gentle “well-born, of noble rank or family,” from Old French gentil/jentil “high-born, worthy, noble, of good family; courageous, valiant; fine, good, fair” (11c., in Modern French “nice, graceful, pleasing; fine, pretty”) and directly from Latin gentilis “of the same family or clan,” in Medieval Latin “of noble or good birth,” from gens (genitive gentis) “race, clan,” from root of gignere “beget,” from PIE root *gene- “to give birth, beget,” from PIE root *gene- “give birth, beget,” with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups.

There is a sense here, both in the social climber Michael Pearson, and in Colin Farrell’s Coach, that through loyalty and consistent deeds of power a man can create his own tribe, his own belonging – it is this which Raymond instinctively senses and acts within, and Fletcher or the upstart Asian gangster Dry Eye would regard as foolish outdated nonsense. The film is, in this sense, a very old-fashioned and even honourable work – even as it is chaotically modern and degenerate.