'Notting Hill?' Does that poke fun at being British? Maybe it does. In 'Mickey Blue Eyes,' that's kind of the point: the clash of worlds, the unlikely combo of a respectable Englishman and a mob guy. If you take out the Britishness, you don't really have much.
I love the English spirit because when I was a player, I was an Englishman: I was fighting, and you had to kill me if you wanted to win.
Charles Darwin sailed around the world for two years on the 'Beagle,' and he had quite a bit of interest in things like the iguanas of the Galapagos, even though they were primitive compared to your average Englishman.