The weed business is booming and Matthew McConaughey isn’t just buying; he’s owning. Or at least he’s trying to keep it that way in the first trailer for The Gentlemen, a crime comedy by Sherlock Holmes and Snatch director Guy Ritchie, as a group of villains try to rob his business. Watch it below.
The Gentlemen tells the story of a tough, old-school kingpin (McConaughey) protecting his marijuana empire from rivals attempting to steal it. The freshly minted University of Texas professor stars in the film alongside Hugh Grant, Henry Golding, Charlie Hunnam, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, and Colin Farrell. It’s set to hit theaters next year on January 24th. The Gentlemen, which Ritchie wrote in addition to directing, will follow his 2019 live-action remake of Disney’s Aladdin.
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The film’s debut trailer is jam-packed with the usual crime comedy antics. There’s gunfights, fistfights, and a nonstop flaunting of good and bad British accents. Though it clocks in at two minutes, the trailer does a good job of setting expectations for the film’s characters. It appears Grant will be a pseudo-intellectual rich man of some kind, Golding is the swift enemy targeting the weed business, Farrell takes the role of an everyday kidnapping specialist, and Hunnam is the posh left-hand man to McConaughey.
While The Gentlemen‘s trailer revolves around threats, violence, and drama, it excels at keeping the tone humorous. McConaughey’s looming, tough-guy quotes — “In the jungle, the only way a lion survives is not by acting like a king, but by being the king” — is inter-spliced with dialogue from Grant’s ridiculously over-the-top accent. Though perhaps the best moment comes courtesy of Farrell, who makes an accent-laden pun at the expense of a victim’s name. Watch it below.
