The movie starts
with one long exposition, like an essay that drags too long to state the reason
for which the title implies. But when it finally gets the ball rolling around
thirty minutes in, the movie brings back the old feeling of Guy Ritchie's style
of filmmaking. This is not like his Sherlock
Holmes or Aladdin
style with all the colors. The movie goes back to his time in 1998
with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but it’s a far cry from how
good that 1998
classic was.
When the movie
does pick up, I found myself not liking the humor much, nor enjoying the lack
of action, but I did find the intricate details with which he builds his story
interesting.
He (Ritchie)
tries very hard to leave no stone unturned and build his character Mickey
(Matthew McConaughey) to be the bad-ass he wanted to portray. The person that
captures the screen for me is not McConaughey, but Charlie Hunnam, who plays
Raymond. It was like he was built for the role, and he made the movie far more
bearable than the rest of the cast could.
The movie starts
with an idea, making you wonder what led to such a situation. Then it leaves
that thought lingering in your mind as it shifts over to a man named Fletcher
(Hugh Grant). Fletcher is not critical to the story the movie tells; he’s more
like a narrator. He approaches Raymond with a proposition: get me $20 million
or I’ll sell this story to the movies. He already has a script written, and
when Raymond looks like he’s not biting, Fletcher decides to tell him the story
he’s going to sell to the film studio. It’s this story (which Fletcher tells
while showing Raymond evidence in the form of pictures and video recordings of
Mickey’s deals) with Raymond adding some corrections that we get to watch.
Mickey turns the
offer down, not wanting to seem weak, but focuses on the person he has already
approached. Things in his business start to affect his plan to retire when one
of his cannabis farms gets hit, and the trail isn’t looking too promising. The problem
further escalates when one of his men kills a Russian. Mickey is trying to
handle all of this, and let’s not forget the pending thought the movie drops in
the opening scene.
Mickey is now trying to resolve everything and just balance things out, aiming
for his retirement.
This balancing
act is what the movie focuses on and how Raymond tries to prevent leaving a
mess behind.
It’s a good
enough movie to recommend, but you have to do so with a warning: “Not so great,
but if you can survive the first thirty minutes, it’s not so bad.”
The movie has
good audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The returns from the box office for
this movie are a good tale for Matthew McConaughey, whose movies haven’t been
doing well lately at the box office.
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