WITH A ROSTER of different directors and screenwriters, the “Star Wars”, Marvel and DC franchises have shown that you can make a colossal blockbuster based on someone else’s characters and still imbue it with your own film-making personality. That is a trick that Guy Ritchie has never quite mastered. During his last decade in Hollywood, the British writer-director has been entrusted with intellectual property after intellectual property, directing two “Sherlock Holmes” films, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”, “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Aladdin”. But if you compare these with Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Ragnorok” or Rian Johnson’s “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”, for example, they seem clumsy and compromised—either not very successful, or not very Ritchie-ish, or both.

You can hardly blame him, then, for retreating to contemporary Britain for another of the shaggy-dog comedy-thrillers which made his name. Like his first two films, “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” (1998) and “Snatch” (2000), “The Gentlemen” bursts with all of Mr Ritchie’s favourite ingredients: gangsters, London pubs, voiceovers, swearing, guns, on-screen captions, suitcases full of money, fights, more swearing, tweed suits, gambling, cars, an ensemble of larger-than-life characters jostling for prominence—and more swearing.

The largest of those characters is Mickey (Matthew McConaughey), an American marijuana baron based in London. He has built underground hothouses on the country estates of the cash-strapped landed gentry, but is planning to sell up and retire in comfort. His beloved cockney wife (Michelle Dockery) warns him that this plan will be taken as a sign of weakness by his competitors, and, sure enough, his loyal lieutenant (Charlie Hunnam) is soon struggling to keep a whole pack of wolves from his door. A billionaire (Jeremy Strong) wants to buy Mickey’s business for a knock-down price. A Chinese upstart (Henry Golding) wants to buy it for even less. The young protegés of a well-meaning Irish boxing coach (Colin Farrell) break into one of the hothouses. A bitter tabloid editor (Eddie Marsan) wants to expose his crimes to the world. A sleazy private investigator (Hugh Grant) tries to blackmail him.

The idea that the crumbling aristocracy is underpinned by criminals, and that one of those criminals wants to join the aristocracy, could have been used in a satirical sequel to “Downton Abbey”. Yet Mr Ritchie does not care for anything as thoughtful as socio-political commentary. Instead, his priority is to be objectionable in every possible way, from the racist language used by certain characters to a torrential vomiting scene (to file alongside the Mr Creosote sketch in “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life”). Still, even when “The Gentlemen” is at its most blokey and offensive, it is exhilarating to see that not only is Mr Ritchie doing what he does best, he is doing what no one else does. He may not have developed any new interests or learned any new directorial techniques since the release of his first frenetic, over-complicated underworld yarn in the late 1990s, but if anyone should be allowed to make a Guy Ritchie film, it’s Guy Ritchie.

When he is being restrained, viewers end up with “Aladdin”, a dull theme-park ride which did not aspire to be anything except an inferior live-action remake of a cartoon. When he shrugs off all restraint, as he does here, the result has a huge amount of gusto, a slew of quirky performances (Mr Grant, in particular, is having a ball) and a reasonable amount of wit. “You need to invest in some parachutes,” grumbles Mickey after Ray has let not one, but two of his associates plummet to their deaths from high buildings.

Will viewers be appalled by some of the extravagantly rude dialogue and callous violence? Yes. Will they snort with laughter at some of it? Also yes. When The Jam’s “That’s Entertainment” rings from the soundtrack at the end, it is clear that “The Gentlemen” really is entertainment, as far as Mr Ritchie is concerned. That sense of purpose has been hard to find in his Hollywood films.

“The Gentlemen” is released in Britain on January 1st. It will be released in America on January 24th