Guy Ritchie's 10 best movies, ranked!

Fountain of Youth hits Apple TV+ on May 24th, marking the latest production from Guy Ritchie.

John Krasinski and Natalie Portman play siblings who team up to track down the titular life-conferring legend. We’re getting distinct tones of Indiana Jones from the pre-release materials, not to mention some previous films that were influenced by George Lucas’s academic treasure hunter, such as National Treasure.

We’re interested to see what Ritchie can do with this well-worn formula, given his inimitable style. The English director has a very particular aesthetic built on a solid foundation of quippy dialogue, fast cuts, and kinetic action scenes – just the ingredients you want in a globe-trotting adventure.

But he’s also expanded his palette in recent years, turning out gritty thrillers, thoughtful war movies, and big budget IP-led studio productions.

Ritchie has had an interesting career alright, releasing his first film in 1998 and going on to make 15 more. Fountain of Youth stands as his 16th.

The former Mr. Madonna is showing no signs of slowing down, and if anything has been even more prolific in recent years.

Let’s be honest – not all of Ritchie’s movies have been great (shout out to the infamously bad Swept Away). However, the majority have been highly entertaining, with a handful truly standing the test of time.

These are the films we reckon you need to check out if you want to see what Guy Ritchie is all about. Here's our top 10 best Guy Ritchie movies, ranked!

10. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

Ritchie assembled a star cast for this crime romp, led by frequent collaborator Jason Statham as a no-nonsense British spy. Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett, and Hugh Grant also bring their considerable talents to bear, even if you suspect that they’re coasting. The unfortunate fact that the baddies are crooked Ukrainians understandably saw Operation Fortune fall into a kind of release schedule limbo, given the ongoing war against Russia, and it’s far from the director’s best work regardless. Still, it has more than enough knock-about charm (not to mention star wattage) to warrant a Friday night stream.

9. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

While it’s based on a true story of World War II derring-do, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is only marginally more connected with reality than the first Captain America film. Henry Cavill leads a borderline super-heroic squad of proto-special-forces types, who strike into Nazi-controlled territory with surgical precision to help turn the tide of the conflict. For all its historical grounding, this is deeply silly, tongue-firmly-in-cheek stuff, and you shouldn’t turn to the film for any sort of factual insight. But this is a Guy Ritchie film after all.

8. Wrath of Man

What’s this? A Guy Ritchie action crime movie with Jason Statham as the lead? We all know where this one’s going... except we really don’t. Wrath of Man takes a decidedly darker tone than your average Ritchie flick, with plenty of grit, few laughs, and little of the imaginatively colourful dialogue we’ve come to associate with the director. Statham plays H, an armed vehicle security guard with an unusually deadly skillset and an axe to grind. It’s a pulpy, bloody revenge B-movie, and a very accomplished one at that.

7. The Covenant

Further proof that Guy Ritchie doesn’t need to be glib to be good, The Covenant offers a sober-minded take on the recent US war in Afghanistan. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Sergeant John Kinley who finds himself injured in Taliban territory. It’s down to his interpreter Ahmed, played by Dar Salim, to extricate him from this deadly situation. What follows isn’t the gung-ho action movie you might be expecting from a Ritchie joint, but rather a surprisingly thoughtful drama that ratchets up the tension whilst asking some uncomfortable questions.

6. The Gentlemen

After a decade playing in different periods and genres, Guy Ritchie went back to his roots with The Gentlemen – another modern tale of British criminality. There are a couple of notable twists on the formula this time around, however. It’s Matthew McConaughey’s slick American marijuana dealer who leads the film, cleverly avoiding the law by carrying out his nefarious business on grounds owned by the (relatively) impoverished aristocracy. It makes for a hugely fun movie, aided by a memorably against-type turn from Hugh Grant as a sleazy tabloid journalist.

5. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

The stakes are significantly higher in Guy Ritchie’s first and hitherto only cinematic sequel, with Jared Harris’s Professor Moriarty providing a deadly continent-threatening counterpoint to Robert Downey Junior’s world famous detective. The resulting film feels like a little less than the sum of its parts, and misses the original’s breezy knock-about charm. However, it remains a thrillingly shot romp across a steam-powered Europe, with RDJ’s brawling Holmes and Jude Law’s rambunctious Watson once again on top form.

4. Sherlock Holmes

Somewhat overshadowed by the fabulous BBC miniseries that debuted shortly after its release, Ritchie’s hyperactive cinematic reboot nonetheless deserves its own place in history. As played by the fast-talking Robert Downey Jr, this take on Holmes is more likely to swing a right hook than he is to enter his mind palace in a bid to get to the bottom of a case. Sherlock Holmes plays out more like a Victorian buddy cop movie, with Jude Law’s Watson providing the perfect muscular foil to Junior’s mercurial detective.

3. Snatch

Snatch broadly stuck with the formula laid out by Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels two years prior, but this time applied a little Hollywood fairy dust in the wake of Ritchie’s newfound fame. Once again, the focus is on London’s criminal underworld, but this time a peak-era Brad Pitt joins the fray as an Irish Traveller boxing champ. It’s all very familiar, and would lead to early (and as it turns out unfair) accusations that Ritchie was a one trick pony. But even if that had proved true, it’s sure some trick.

2. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Unfairly overlooked at launch, this slick spy caper sees Ritchie successfully rebooting a cult US TV series from the 1960s. He wisely sticks to the period of the original, with Henry Cavill playing suitably dashing and debonaire CIA agent Napoleon Solo, who is forced into a reluctant partnership with his opposite number in the KGB, Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer). Ritchie’s pacy style and ear for snappy dialogue works brilliantly in this setting, proving he was about more than London geezers shooting and swearing at one another.

1. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

The film that started it all off for Ritchie is also arguably still his best. That sounds like a bit of a slight, but Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was a real sensation when it landed in cinemas back in 1998. Its blend of fast-talking British gangsters, comic hyper-violence, twisty interlocking storylines, and slick cinematography had many Brits thinking that they had stumbled upon their very own Quentin Tarantino. It turned out that we hadn’t – there’s only one QT – but that does nothing to diminish the enduring appeal of Ritchie’s zesty debut, and the catalogue of fun-filled films he's released since.

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