Back in the 2000s, it was always frustrating to me how infrequent Guy Ritchie’s movies were. Back in the late nineties, he became one of the hottest young directors thanks to the one-two punch of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, both of which became classics. But his next two films seemingly took forever to come out, and were both abysmal, with Swept Away a misguided vanity project for then-wife Madonna, while his return to the crime genre, Revolver, had many believing the film was overly influenced by the religion he was practicing at the time, Kabbalah (although it did offer Mark Strong a great early role as a nerdy but deadly assassin with a conscience).
Yet, with Sherlock Holmes in 2009 (following a much stronger gangster outing — RocknRolla — which gave Tom Hardy an early showcase role), Guy Ritchie found himself a blockbuster director, and seventeen years later, there’s no one nearly as prolific. He alternates between big-budget blockbusters, such as Disney’s Aladdin, and his more personal gangster tales (The Gentlemen), along with a solid selection of action programmers mixed in, like this week’s In the Gray. No one is as busy as him, with him having another movie due out this year (Wife & Dog) plus a reteam with Jason Statham next year, Viva La Madness. And oh yeah, he’s got a bunch of TV shows going too, with the TV version of The Gentlemen a major hit for Netflix, while Young Sherlock just got a second season at Prime Video, and MobLand is still going strong at Paramount Plus.
While I’ll freely admit some of his movies are better than others, and that his best stuff nowadays might be the streaming shows (MobLand and The Gentlemen are both really terrific), no one is as busy as him, and his body of work is crazy. With that in mind, we want to know: what’s his best film? Take the poll below and let us know!