The Gentlemen plays like a tall tale, a story heard at the corner bar, filled with exaggerations and embellishments, where the storyteller expects you to pay his bill at the end. 

And maybe you won’t mind doing so. The narrator is a conniving unscrupulous private detective named Fletcher (played by Hugh Grant), who glories in all he knows about the intersecting criminal-drug-lord elements operating in England and sets out to blackmail everyone with a screenplay he’s written, where he lays it all out, naming names.

The Guy Ritchie directed film stars Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant. Fletcher’s screenplay is called “BUSH,” bush, in this case, a euphemism for “marijuana,” this being an incredibly complicated tale about the “turf war” in the marijuana business: everyone knows legalization is coming, and fast. The end days are nigh. 

The “bush” double entendre is also present, just for the chuckles factor, and gives you an idea of the overall tone.

Also, as usual, it’s stuffed with name actors who seem to be having a good time, which can be diverting when you’re not cringing. As is often the case with Guy Ritchie, the dudes far outnumber the women, hereby roughly six to one.

The actors have been studiously decorated and sometimes flamboyantly sleazed up with flash outfits, hair product and statement eyewear. Hugh Grant wears glasses (and a goatee), as do Charlie Hunnam, Jeremy Strong and Colin Farrell. 

All deliver lightly funny, loose turns and are generally nice to watch. That’s especially true of Grant (as a scummy snoop with an overcompensating long photo lens) and Farrell (an earnest, lethal coach with many tracksuits), whose roles, performances and outfits seem designed to obliterate their leading-man personas. Henry Golding, a romantic lead in the hit “Crazy Rich Asians,” doesn’t demolish his persona, just shrewdly roughs it up.