Skip to main content

The 7 best Guy Ritchie movies, ranked

For the last 25 years, Guy Ritchie has been one of the most unique directors in the entertainment industry, thanks in large part to his wildly popular crime comedies. Although Ritchie got his start with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, he has gone on to helm a wide variety of films, from Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake to his latest film, The Covenant, which is out in theaters this week.

Not everything Ritchie does has been critically acclaimed. His remake of Swept Away has an infamously low Rotten Tomatoes score of 5%, while The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword were huge box-office bombs. Conversely, Aladdin didn’t get great reviews, but it made Disney a lot of money. Ritchie usually finds his groove with the kind of dark comedies that he built his career on, most of which are terrific even if they didn’t attract a wide audience initially. To celebrate Ritchie’s newest film, we’re taking a look back at the seven best Guy Ritchie movies, as ranked by Rotten Tomatoes in descending order.

Recommended Videos

7. Wrath of Man (2021)

Jason Statham in Wrath of Man.
MGM

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 67%

Who is Patrick “H” Hill (Jason Statham)? Ritchie’s Wrath of Man poses that question when it introduces H as a lowly armored truck driver alongside Haiden “Bullet” Blaire (Holt McCallany) and Dave “Boy Sweat” Hancock (Josh Hartnett). But when the armored truck comes under attack by robbers, H proves to be far more adept with weapons than he should be as he wipes out the crooks. If anything, he’s far too competent for this job, and other thieves just flee when they catch a glimpse of him.

H keeps his cards close to the vest, but viewers will eventually get their answers as they learn who he is, and why he is on a bloody rampage for revenge. Everyone should fear his wrath.

6. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer in The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68%

Ritchie’s reboot of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. was a massive-box office bust, in part because very few people seem to remember the original TV series from the 1960s. However, it may ultimately become a cult film because the action is great, and it captures the campy Cold War era setting of the show.

In 1963, American CIA Agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and his Russian KGB rival, Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), find themselves at odds when Solo tries to smuggle Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander) out of occupied East Berlin. But when Solo discovers that Gaby’s uncle Rudi (Sylvester Groth) is linked to Nazis who are close to landing a nuclear weapon, he is ordered to team up with Kuryakin and eliminate the threat as part of a new international task force. And thus, U.N.C.L.E. is born.

5. Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in Sherlock Holmes.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 69%

Sherlock Holmes, action hero? Ritchie’s take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective may sound ludicrous at first, but it proved to be a winning box-office formula. Robert Downey Jr. stars in Sherlock Holmes as the title character, with Jude Law as his frequent partner, Dr. John Watson.

The film opens with Holmes and Watson seemingly at the end of their long association as the latter prepares to marry Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly). Meanwhile, Lord Henry Blackwood (Mark Strong), a serial killer who was put away by Holmes and Watson, claims that he has supernatural abilities and that he will continue his killing spree after his demise. Shortly after the return of Holmes’ rival/lover, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), Blackwood’s prediction appears to be true, forcing Holmes and Watson to renew their partnership to solve the mystery.

4. Snatch (2000)

Brad Pitt in Snatch.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 74%

Overlapping crime stories intersect with dark comedy in Snatch. Brad Pitt is the most recognizable star in the film, and he plays Mickey O’Neil, a skilled fighter who accidentally upends the plans of crime lord “Brick Top” Pulford (Alan Ford) and a promoter named Turkish (Jason Statham) when he knocks out his opponent in one punch instead of throwing the fight as planned.

Meanwhile, Franky Four-Fingers (Benicio del Toro) has come to London to pass off a stolen diamond to Douglas “Doug The Head” Denovitz (Mike Reid) when the big fight with Mickey grabs his attention. Unfortunately for Franky, he doesn’t realize that an ex-KGB agent, Boris “The Blade” Yurinov (Rade Šerbedžija), plans to betray him and steal the diamond himself.

3. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

The cast of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Gramercy Pictures

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

Ritchie’s first film, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, set the tone for many of the other crime comedies in his career. The story primarily follows minor-league crooks Eddie (Nick Moran), Tom (Jason Flemyng), Soap (Dexter Fletcher), and Bacon (Jason Statham) as they hatch a scheme to get rich quick by cheating during a high-stakes card game run by “Hatchet” Harry Lonsdale (P. H. Moriarty).

The joke’s on them, however, when the game is rigged and they find themselves in over their heads in debt with Harry. To save their skins, the group decides to rob another set of thieves as they return from a cannabis heist with a pair of rare and valuable shotguns that Harry greatly desires. From there, all hell breaks loose.

2. The Gentlemen (2019)

Michelle Dockery and Matthew McConaughey in The Gentleman.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 75%

In The Gentlemen, Matthew McConaughey’s Mickey Pearson is an American living in Britain who has made a fortune in the underground cannabis business, with Raymond Smith (Charlie Hunnam) as his right-hand man. Because Pearson wants to cash out and retire with his wife, Rosalind Pearson (Michelle Dockery), his prospective buyer, Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong), conspires to undermine Pearson’s business in order to cut down on the price.

In another subplot, a private investigator named Fletcher (Hugh Grant) has learned the truth about Pearson’s drug empire, and he attempts to blackmail him by writing it all up as a screenplay. And when that fails, Fletcher decides to take the screenplay to Hollywood producers and make a movie out of it.

1. The Covenant

Jake Gyllenhaal in The Covenant.
MGM

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

Guy Ritchie’s latest film, The Covenant, has given him the best reviews of his career. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as John Kinley, a sergeant in the U.S. army during the War in Afghanistan. Kinley hires a local, Ahmed (Dar Salim), to serve as interpreter, and the two men strike up a friendship. While Ahmed shows great valor by saving Kinley from a Taliban ambush, the American government ignores Ahmed’s pleas for help when the Taliban come for him. Angered by his government’s inaction, Kinley takes it upon himself to return to Afghanistan and rescue his friend.

Topics
Blair Marnell
Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek…
25 years later, this outrageous action movie remains the ideal summer blockbuster
The cast of Deep Blue Sea.

Twenty-five years ago this week, an under-the-radar action movie swam into theaters as the comeback project of director Renny Harlin and became an unexpected late-summer hit. Although Harlin had established himself with films like Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, he also directed Cutthroat Island, a pirate flick that lost so much money that it helped sink a studio. By 1999, Harlin hadn't had a true hit for six years until Deep Blue Sea gave it to him.

Harlin and his collaborators brought together a first-rate cast for the film, including Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Samuel L. Jackson, Stellan Skarsgård, Michael Rapaport, and even LL Cool J in one of his earliest roles. At the time, only Jackson was a certified movie star, but Deep Blue Sea helped these performers go on to even bigger things.

Read more
This excellent 2004 movie changed the game for the action genre forever
A man burns a journal in The Bourne Supremacy.

Today, Matt Damon is largely known as a movie star. The Oscar winner has had a long and quite prolific career, starring in leading and supporting roles alike and receiving acclaim in multiple genres. From psychological thrillers like The Talented Mr. Ripley to sci-fi vehicles like The Martian, from pitch-black comedies like The Informer! to cheesy family flicks like We Bought a Zoo, Damon has truly done it all.

It was 2002's The Bourne Identity that launched Damon as a potential action star, but the sequel ensured his legacy. More importantly, The Bourne Supremacy changed the game for the action genre as a whole, acting as a precursor to the gritty, thrilling, raw action films that would dominate much of the late 2000s and early 2010s and paving the way for the over-the-top extravaganzas we have today. On its 20th anniversary, let's look back at The Bourne Supremacy, a film that changed its genre for good -- and for the better.
The Damon identity

Read more
This unforgettable film might just be the best sci-fi movie ever made. Here’s why
Two men look fearful in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The most iconic image of Donald Sutherland’s career is a spoiler. To describe it would risk giving away more than the uninitiated might want to know about Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman’s 1978 adaptation of the Jack Finney novel about extraterrestrial imposters out to replace humanity with emotionless doubles. But you know the image. You’ve almost certainly seen it used as a meme sometime over the last couple of decades -- or maybe the last couple of weeks, in response to the actor’s death in June. For those who have watched the movie, there’s always been some cognitive dissonance to seeing that shot transformed into internet joke currency. It is, after all, one of the most blood-curdling images in all of cinema: the look of hope shriveling away, of the future disappearing into a screaming black hole.

It’s a tad ironic that Sutherland might be best remembered for such a grotesquely outsized expression, such a monstrous moment. He was one of Hollywood’s most subtle performers, a New Hollywood legend who often underplayed what was going on inside his characters’ hearts and heads. But his work in Invasion of the Body Snatchers is richer than its final note. As Matthew Bennell, a San Francisco health inspector who slowly becomes aware of a hostile alien takeover in progress, Sutherland offers a vast range of feelings. Arrogance, good humor, fear, deep romantic longing, bottomless despair: Long before he’s literally running from the pod people, Sutherland runs the emotional gamut across this peerless sci-fi nightmare of a thriller.

Read more