Every now and then Guy Ritchie makes a film in a crisp, focused style that can be utterly beguiling. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is not one of them. Filled with snark, bombast, and empty violence, this WWII actioner is destined for cable filler.
Opening with an acoustic guitar behind melancholy whistling, Ministry evokes both Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks for Sergio Leone and the type of large-scale WWII blockbusters prevalent in the 1960s. We’re soon in a screening room with Winston Churchill (an unrecognizable Roy Kinnear) watching newsreel footage of Nazis winning the war.
Ignoring advice from his cabinet to appease Hitler, Churchill orders intelligence leader “M” (Cary Elwes) and his associate Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox) to assemble a team that will attack a crucial U-boat loading facility on Fernando Po, an island off the west coast of Africa.
Summoned first is Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill), an imprisoned killer who refuses to obey the rules. He in turn gathers Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), a Danish killer expert with knife and bow-and-arrow; frogman and explosives expert Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding); Irish killer and expert sailor Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin); and killer Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), a prisoner of the Nazis.
Ahead of them on Fernando Po: spy Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) and bar owner Heron (Babs Olusanmokun), setting in place a plot to defeat local Nazi leader Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger). Believe it or not, Luhr is a sadist who likes to manacle women before having his way with them.
That’s a lot of exposition, supposedly based on the book The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops by Damien Lewis, but in fact cribbed from The Dirty Dozen, Casablanca, The Guns of Navarone, and whatever Tarantino the filmmakers screened last.
Take the opening scene, with our heroes sailing in the Atlantic. Boarded by mean Nazis in navy whites, Gus and Lassen joke and tease the villains before killing them all in gory but curiously antiseptic ways. Then Freddy blows up the Nazi destroyer.
The jokes and carnage continue as the ungentlemen break into a Nazi prison, free Appleyard, and continue south. Scores of Nazis die while the heroes barely suffer a scratch. Jaunty jazz accompanies their killing sprees. Lassen has an apparently inexhaustible supply of arrows; his bow vanishes when he no longer needs it.
At least Ritchson (a solid Jack Reacher for two seasons on Amazon) displays some athleticism. He actually looks frenzied in one scene as he hacks at a Nazi with his knife. Cavill strolls through the movie without breaking a sweat, acting with his facial hair. For long passages I forgot Golding was even in the film.
As for González, she’s like Margot Robbie in Babylon, a thoroughly modern figure lost in a period outside her understanding. She sings a baffling “Mack the Knife” that’s as much Bobby Darin as Lotte Lenya. Maybe that’s why Schweiger’s Nazi is so angry with her.
I enjoyed Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, a war movie made with conviction instead of frills. But Ministry harks back to the excruciating Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. Both are lazy, self-satisfied, time-wasters.
Credits: Directed by: Guy Ritchie. Screenplay by Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson and Arash Amel & Guy Ritchie. Based The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops by Damien Lewis. Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer, p.g.a., Guy Ritchie, p.g.a., Chad Oman, p.g.a., Ivan Atkinson, John Friedberg. Director of photography: Ed Wild, BSC. Production designer: Martyn John. Edited by James Herbert. Music by Chris Benstead. Cast: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusanmokun, Henrique Zaga, Til Schweiger, with Henry Golding and Cary Elwes.
Photos courtesy Lionsgate. Opens in theaters April 19, 2024.
