‘The Gentlemen’ Season 2 Takes Its Gangster Ambitions Too Seriously

Gangster cinema often signals a mob boss’s maturation through negotiating prowess. In Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather Part II,” a newly confident Michael Corleone responds to a crooked Nevada senator trying to squeeze him with an offer of precisely nothing: “not even the fee for the gaming license,” which he expects the politician to pay himself. Season 2 of Guy Ritchie’s “The Gentlemen,” streaming on Netflix, gives Eddie Horniman (Theo James) a similar moment of criminal arrival. Negotiating with a politician, Eddie suavely settles the matter for a few thousand pounds, despite being prepared to proffer millions.

Picking up where the first season left off, Ritchie’s British-aristocracy-meets-Mafioso crossover borrows heavily from Coppola’s world and its moral order. James reprises the role of the 13th Duke of Halstead, now formally entrenched in the marijuana empire he spent the first season trying to escape, with new ambitions and seemingly unquenchable avarice.

“I want it back, Geoff. I want it all back,” he tells his loyal gamekeeper (Vinnie Jones) in the opening episode, standing beside a fleet of Range Rovers and overlooking a verdant estate already larger than most suburban neighborhoods. Eddie wants to restore his dukedom to its former glory in landmass, wealth, and reputation.

His ambitions soon extend beyond England. Stately Italian palazzos have been retrofitted into cannabis farms, bringing Eddie and Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario) into the orbit of Mafia “boss of bosses” Marco Moretti (Sergio Castellitto). Conquering Italy is still insufficient. Eddie also sets his sights on the House of Lords, where he hopes to influence a bill decriminalizing cannabis and turn his criminal enterprise into something approaching a legitimate business. This puts him at odds with Bobby Glass (Ray Winstone), who, having apparently spent enough time in Canada to see hippie cannabis shops lining every other street corner, wants the bill buried.

The season retains its predecessor’s fixation on life’s finer indulgences. In one memorable sequence, Eddie hosts his new Italian partners at Halstead and takes them shooting — appropriately clad in tweed. The armory contains no gaudy wall of practical firearms like ARs or AKs, only a gentlemanly collection of antique shotguns made by artisans. Elsewhere, the script casually name-drops prestigious wines such as Petrus, Masseto, and Mouton. When Michele Morrone’s Cico Maldini — a criminally underused character this season — theatrically accuses Eddie of serving a corked 1989 Mouton at dinner, the writers clearly understand this is the sort of thing you can get killed for.

Yet all this elegance cannot disguise the season’s central problem. Eddie’s darker descent into ambition saps “The Gentlemen” of much of its freewheeling humour. A coked-up Freddy (Daniel Ings) being forced to dance like a chicken or impersonating an Eastern European gangster while trying to buy a sports car produced some of Season 1’s funniest scenes. Here, Eddie’s drug-addled brother spends much of the season locked away in rehab before being handed an unfortunate arc with unmistakable echoes of “The Godfather,” which I will not divulge for the sake of spoilers.

The same shift alters Eddie’s relationship with Susie. Their playful dynamic once paired her seasoned criminal maturity against his wit, nerve, and determination to find an exit. Season 2 increasingly becomes the Eddie Horniman show (he doesn’t need her guidance anymore), leaving Scodelario with scant opportunity to parry with James.

Despite the Coppola parallels, Eddie seems remarkably uninterested in furthering the Horniman lineage. Religious portent hangs over his ascent, supplied by Stanley Johnston (Giancarlo Esposito), who spends much of the season extolling Eddie’s ancestry, and the menacing biblical butcher Gospel John (Pearce Quigley). Eddie eventually marries the affluent Italian heiress Bella (Benedetta Porcaroli), a union whose business advantages are obvious, yet the romance is so thinly developed that its emotional significance never quite lands. The pair share less chemistry than Susie Glass and a pair of flats.

One welcome beneficiary of the expanded story is Geoff, whose long-clandestine affair with the Horniman matriarch finally comes into the open. His daughter Charly’s (Jasmine Blackborow) partner, Nanny (Benjamin Clementine), father of the Horniman heir Tarquin, meanwhile drifts aimlessly through much of the season (making one wonder why he is there at all) before revealing formidable military prowess in a tense and highly entertaining finale.

Eddie’s transformation is a logical progression for a man who discovered that narcotics trafficking suits him rather well. But where “Goodfellas’” Henry Hill regarded ordinary middle-class existence as a kind of hell, and Michael Corleone was drawn into the family business to protect his own, Eddie could be wafting across the Mediterranean on a yacht. He had an out. He wants the power and is as drawn to it as his brother Freddy is to cocaine.

That choice makes his descent more interesting, but the series sacrifices something in completing it. There is still plenty to enjoy in Ritchie’s impeccably tailored criminal playground. Somewhere along Eddie’s path toward conquering the underworld, however, “The Gentlemen” lost much of its fun.

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Harry Khachatrian (@Harry1T6) is a film critic for the Washington Examiner. He is a software engineer, holds a master’s degree from the University of Toronto, and writes about wine at BetweenBottles.com.

 This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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