Overview
- The film, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill with Eiza González and Carlos Bardem in supporting roles, has opened in cinemas and is being reviewed as a brisk action-thriller.
- Reviewers praise Ritchie’s signature elements — practical stunts, fast banter and kinetic set pieces — as the main source of the film’s entertainment value.
- Critics say the screenplay underuses the two male leads and gives the characters little dramatic depth, and they note the film runs at roughly 100 minutes which reviewers view as too brief.
- Ritchie has described the story as inspired by true anecdotes from a lawyer friend and has referenced an implausibly large real-world debt case of about $50 billion as part of the film’s provenance.
- The production filmed on location in Spain, notably Tenerife, and in Saudi Arabia, and commentators place the film within Ritchie’s broader return to the heist/underworld tone that defined his early career.