Guy Ritchie’s tall tales of toffs and robbers continue apace in this second series of The Gentlemen, as we return to the country estate of Edward Horniman, 13th Duke of Halstead. Theo James strides once again to the crease as the Duke, with Kaya Scodelario returning as Susie Glass, Eddie’s business partner and daughter of thuggish crime supremo Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone).
Eddie is now expanding his subterranean weed-growing business further afield, via an Italian connection, Cico Maldini (Michele Morrone). Unfortunately Cico is an uncouth oaf incapable of civilised conversation or savouring the subtleties of fine vintage wines (“you’re the witless son of a used car dealer,” snorts Eddie in disgust). However, things start to look more promising when Eddie forms a relationship with Marco Moretti (Sergio Castellito), a proper mafioso with vastly more refined tastes. Meanwhile poor old Cico gets thrown to the lions (or at least a very large tiger).
Some may contend that Ritchie’s narrative landscape is becoming a trifle over-familiar, but The Gentlemen 2 successfully brushes any such cavils aside with the sheer energy and velocity of its storytelling. One welcome new arrival on the scene is Lord Hawthorne, a port-soaked old aristocrat played with verve and comical campness by Hugh Bonneville. He becomes a significant cog in the plot in a variety of ways, not only for his slavering venality but also for his part in getting Eddie promoted to the House of Lords (pictured below, Kaya Scodelario with Theo James).
On top of that, he is tasked with sabotaging the passage through the Lords of a bill to legalise cannabis, since this would endanger Eddie’s drug-spreading masterplan. Unfortunately for Eddie, however, Susie’s dad takes the opposite point of view, and he’s going to make Eddie suffer for his impertinence and presumption.
Ritchie lifts his story out of the predictable potholes of gangster-land with some oblique and sometimes mystical touches. Bobby Glass, for instance, frequently seeks guidance in his career of villainy by communing bizarrely, frequently while in the sauna, with a “Bannik” (a little old man with a long white beard, derived from Slavic mythology).
Then there’s the mysterious figure of Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito, aka Gus Fring from Breaking Bad, pictured below), an enigmatic presence who bankrolls Eddie, seemingly out of an ambition to encourage his spiritual growth and enable him to fulfill his destiny by making him jump through character-building hoops. He apparently envisions him as a descendant of King Priam of Troy, though Eddie restricts himself merely to pondering over the 700-year history of his family and their estate. Although his theology degree from Oxford does permit him to engage in some metaphysical speculation about mortality, fate, sin etc.
There are amusing detours to the empire of Peruvian drug baron Carlos Varga (Cosimo Fusco), and, back in aristo-land, perorations on the various perquisites of the bloated, idle rich (is this what Ritchie gets up to in his spare time?). For instance, we visit the arcane world of falcon-breeding and learn about the qualities of various marques of shotgun, while there are drive-on roles for the Bentley Mk VI Drophead Coupe and Ferrari’s ultra-rare 330 Spider. A £16m Botticelli painting becomes the target of a gang of bike-riding scalliwags.
The centrepiece of the series is a lavish wedding at a fairy-tale castle set in sumptuous Italian lakeside scenery, which almost gives the wedding of Don Corleone’s daughter in Francis Coppola’s first Godfather movie a run for its money. The flipside of that is a thriller-within-a-thriller when unknown sleazebags make a nighttime raid on Eddie’s family seat, where faithful gamekeeper Geoffrey (a surprisingly nuanced performance by Vinnie Jones) shows his mettle. All of which adds up to make Gentlemen 2 quite an impressive achievement.
