MovieChat Forums > The Gentlemen (2020) Discussion > Matthew McConaughey sucked in this

Matthew McConaughey sucked in this


He pretty much just played himself. No attempt to hide his southern drawl and convince us that he's been living in the UK for most of his life. I didn't buy his character at all, if you can even call that a character. It was just Matthew reading lines.

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You are not wrong my friend!!

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I don't get the McConaughey attraction. I can't get past him playing himself. So when I see a movie I don't see the character I see McConaughey. It distracts me. Not his fault but it's like when I see a Swarzenneger movie I see Arnold before the character.

In some movies that works fine, but in something like this I feel they should have used a different leading man.

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I never got the appeal. I think he's a decent enough actor, but he really plays himself.

The only time I thought he crushed it was True Detective, but I think playing that type of character (half-lunatic with a 50-yard stare) is easier than people think. It's like when I say Cruise was the real actor in Rain Man, though Dustin Hoffman won the award. It's much harder to play off a guy acting retarded than the other way around.

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Idk man, I liked him. He stole every scene he was in... though you do have a point.

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He wasn't bad per se but definitely miscast in my opinion. His signature Texan drawl just felt out of place for a British crime film & the character being American didn't really add anything. It just felt like an excuse to explain his accent which was then undercut but the fact that he was supposed to have been living in the U.K. since at least his early 20s & apparently never losing his Texas accent in all that time.

Side Note: I have an older relative from England who moved to the U.S. in the 1980s when she was in her late 20s & she simply chose to maintain her native British accent despite living in the U.S. for 30+ years now. Apparently, Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted that he has deliberately maintained his thick Austrian accent because it's been an iconic part of his image for so long. So while unlikely, there is a real life precedent for people maintaining their native accents despite living in a different country for most of their lives.

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