The Gentlemen 2 review: Guy Ritchie's gangster playground is still fun, not fresh

Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen was never meant to be polite. Two years after the first season, the Netflix series returns with more crime, more money, more drama and, thankfully, plenty of the chaos that made it such an entertaining watch. But Season 2 also changes the game for Eddie Horniman. He is no longer the reluctant aristocrat dragged into the criminal world. This time, he wants to rule it.

Played by Theo James, Eddie is now the 13th Duke of Halstead and a crime boss in an unusually well-cut suit. His ambitions have grown with his empire. He wants to expand Bobby Glass’ cannabis business into Italy, push his way into Westminster and even secure a seat in the House of Lords. Along the way come Italian gangsters, Peruvian cartels, political deals and a few wonderfully bizarre detours. It is bigger than Season 1, but not always better.

What makes Eddie interesting is that his criminal ambition is tied to something deeply personal: his family estate. Early in the season, he looks around his land and tells his groundskeeper, Geoff, that the family’s property has been shrinking for generations. “I want it back, Geoff. I want it all back!” he says. Suddenly, Eddie’s empire is not just about money. It is about inheritance, pride and taking back what he believes belongs to him.

That idea runs through the Season. Ritchie has always enjoyed putting Britain’s upper classes next to criminals and watching the two worlds blur. Here, the connection becomes even more obvious. Eddie wants a place among the country’s most powerful men while running a drug empire behind the walls of his ancestral home. The joke, of course, is that the two worlds may not be as different as they appear.

The story picks up after Eddie and Susie Glass, played by Kaya Scodelario, joined forces to run the cannabis operation beneath his estate. Bobby Glass, played by Ray Winstone, remains the man with the money and muscle behind the business. Eddie, however, wants out of that arrangement. He wants control. His next move takes him into Italy, where he crosses paths with mafia boss Marco Moretti, played by Sergio Castellitto, and begins looking at the drug trade on a much larger scale.

There is plenty of fun along the way. A motorcycle chase adds some old-school Ritchie energy. A stolen Botticelli sends the plot off on another entertaining tangent. Hugh Bonneville is particularly good as Lord Hawthorne, a peer who is perfectly happy to be bought and cheerfully announces, “I am being greased!” Ray Winstone, meanwhile, makes Bobby impossible to ignore, whether he is issuing threats from a sauna or barking orders from his hot tub.

And then there is Freddy.

Daniel Ings continues to be one of the show’s secret weapons. Freddy is still gloriously useless, but Ings plays him with such confidence that even his stupidity becomes part of the fun. His scenes bring some much-needed lightness when the main story gets too tangled in business deals and international crime.

Theo James, however, remains a more complicated proposition. He looks every inch the aristocratic gangster, and there is an appealing coolness to Eddie. But the character can sometimes feel strangely distant. James plays his restraint well, yet Eddie’s transformation into a crime kingpin does not always land with the force the script expects. There are moments when he seems more like a perfectly dressed figure moving through the story than a man being changed by it.

The show is at its best when it stops trying to be important and simply has fun. Ritchie’s visual style remains intact, with sharp editing, stylish frames and sudden bursts of violence. The humour is crude, the characters are larger than life and the dialogue is full of the kind of ridiculous bravado that would sound absurd anywhere else.

There is a comfort to that. In a Season that sometimes feels too long, Ritchie’s familiar world of country estates, gangsters, old money and men threatening each other over business deals can still make you smile.

The problem is that Season 2 takes its time getting there. The story has more moving parts, but the additional scale also makes it less nimble. Some plot threads feel stretched, and the international expansion does not always have the same spark as the more contained story of the first Season.

Still, The Gentlemen knows exactly what it wants to be. It is stylish, rude, violent and knowingly ridiculous. Season 2 may not have the freshness of its predecessor, but it gives Eddie bigger ambitions and a much larger playground. For fans of Guy Ritchie’s particular brand of crime comedy, that may be more than enough.

The Gentlemen Season 2 is currently streaming on Netflix.