by Rachel Klein ‘22

Director Guy Ritchie’s movie, “The Gentlemen,” starring Matthew McConaughey and Jeremy Strong has recently hit theaters, and it won’t be leaving without a little controversy. Despite the film getting good reviews on major websites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, many viewers were disturbed by the racist and anti-semitic jokes and remarks throughout the movie.

“The Gentlemen” follows Mickey Pearson (McConaughey), an American who became rich after building his marajuana empire in London. When word gets out that he wants to cash out of the business, a spiral of blackmail, bribery, and deceit begins. Pearson decides he wants to sell his business to billionaire Matthew Berger (Strong). Of course, this sale does not go without complications. Rival Chinese buyers, including Dry Eye and Lord George, try to buy the business from Pearson, but he declines the offer. Many more characters come into play, some trying to blackmail Pearson, others trying to destroy everything he has. 

Some viewers have complained about racist aspects of the film. For example, Dry Eye, one of the rival Chinese buyers, is introduced as a “Chinese, Japanese, Pekingese” bond-type. After this, the character that introduced him, Fletcher, goes on to say that Dry Eye has a “license to kill” but swaps the “l” for an “r” to mimic or mock the way Dry Eye speaks. Also in “The Gentlemen” it becomes apparent that the Jewish characters and the Asian characters start to team up against the working-class white males, and ultimately end up dead or injured. Those Jewish and Asian characters also used black men as their “instruments,” according to Alyssa Rosenberg with The Washington Post. 

Ritchie also uses some anti-semitic steroetypes according to many critics, including Rosenberg. The character that Pearson is looking to sell his empire to, Matthew Berger, is Jewish. Throughout the movie, Berger is shown to be cheap and a cheat, two extremely common Jewish stereotypes. Rosenberg describes him as “good with money, is devious to the point of unscrupulousness about his business affairs and hires giant bodyguards he describes as his ‘Mossad crabs,’” Mossad refers to the national intelligence agency of Israel.