Gentlemen Explorers (a.k.a. Young Gentlemen Explorers) is a low-budget 2013 Steampunk movie.
Set in 1893, Marcus O'Riley and his partner The Magician are freelance explorers who specialize in the retrieval of folklore objects and are forced by a secret government agency to retrieve a powerful object from one of the Grimm Brother's fairy tales, the Infinity Pistol. In order to find the Pistol, the two explorers must partner with a gorgeous Mexican artifact agent in order to find it before the warmongering Prussians do.
Tropes:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Riley is sent to infiltrate a high stakes poker by posing as the American representative. The game is a winner-takes-all game of Texas hold 'em where the Mexican representative is wagering a boxcar of gold, the Prussian a shipment of high-tech rifles, and the American the territories the U.S. won in the Mexican–American War.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Marcus O'Riley's motivation for doing what he does is to finally earn his doctorate and because he believes the mystic artifacts he locates belong in museums. His partner Charles, on the other hand, is Only in It for the Money.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: The wicked Prussian agent in charge of the mission to secure the Infinity Pistol is known only as the Count.
- Beard of Evil: As befits an evil aristocrat, the Prussian agent known as the Count sports a goatee.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: The Brothers Grimm were actually Adventurer Archaeologists who used collecting fol stories as a cover for locating and acquiring the magical artifacts described in those stories to keep them out of the wrong hands.
- Bottomless Magazines: This is an explicit property of the Infinity Pistol: a magical gun that is enchanted to never run out of bullets.
- Bound and Gagged: When Charles and Burt come to rescue Agent Rodriguez they find her gagged and bound with an absurdly huge rope.
- The Cavalry: When the heroes are pinned down by the Prussians, they are saved by the arrival of Tavington and his agents. There arrival is even accompanied by a bugle playing charge: seemingly coming from nowhere.
- Chained Heat: Charles handcuffs himself to Agent Rodriguez when they are attempting to escape from the Count's home so she cannot run off with the compass. Needless to say, this makes the escape considerably more difficult.
- Chased by Angry Natives: Opens with Riley and the Magician being chased by an Eskimo warrior as they attempt to escape with skull of John the Baptist. It Makes Just As Much Sense In Context.
- Covert Group with Mundane Front: The mysterious agency that recruits Riley and the Magician gives them cover identities as agents of the US Postal Service. It is later shown that this is the standard cover for its agents.
- Death Dealer: Early on, the Magician demonstrates the Chekhov's Skill of being able to throw playing cards with enough accuracy to shatter glass bottles. Later, he kills two Prussian guards by embedding cards in their throats.
- Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Director Tavington smokes one, even casually lighting it as his agents blow up the town of Goldfield.
- Fanservice Extra: The Magician demonstrates a card trick to a table full of lingerie clad prostitutes in the brothel.
- Finger In The Barrel: Agent Rodriguez defeats the Count by jamming a rock down the barrel of his steam gun when he's not looking. The backfire somehow causes the forces of Heaven to be unleashed on him.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The Valley of Fire:The Magician: That sounds like a lovely place to take a vacation.
- Job Title
- Legendary Weapon: The Infinity Pistol: a magical gun that never runs out of bullets. Most people only know of it from the story recorded by The Brothers Grimm, and regard it as nothing more than a legend.
- MacGuffin: Everybody is searching for the Infinity Pistol: a magical gun that never needs reloading.
- Mexico Called; They Want Texas Back: An Absurdly Highstakes Game of poker is organized between representatives of Prussia, Mexico and the USA. The USA's stake is the territories it took off Mexico in the Mexican-American War.
- Never Bareheaded: The Magician is never seen without his grey top hat, even when the only other thing he is wearing are his red long johns.
- Officer O'Hara: The copper who arrests Riley and the Magician at the brothel has what was probably intended to be an Irish accent, but quickly becomes What the Hell Is That Accent?
- Take Off Your Clothes: Inverted when Agent Rodriguez tells Charles to undo her dress. Charles comments that he usually like to get to know someone better first, but obliges; averting his eyes as he does so. However, reason she asked him to do so was that she was wearing a more practical outfit of pants, boots, shirt and vest under the gown, and she couldn't undo it herself because Charles had handcuffed them together.
