The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare [Review]
Guy Ritchie’s latest is an entertaining war film missing his distinctive panache.
Credit: Lionsgate
Based on a true story unearthed when some British War Department documents were declassified in 2016, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a heavily fictionalized account of the formation of a covert team of unsavory but talented gents by Winston Churchill and Ian Fleming, tasked with Operation Postmaster. Guy Ritchie’s film is light, fun, and very violent, but suffers from a lack of originality and his distinctive style.
Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear), Birgadier “M” Gubbins (Cary Elwes), and Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox) bring in jailed soldier Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) to lead a mission to cripple the operations of Nazi U-boats by destroying the Italian ship that supplies them, docked at neutral Spanish island Fernando Po off the west coast of Africa. March-Phillips hand-picks a team—muscular close combat and archery expert Lassen (Alan Ritchson), demolitions expert Alvarez (Henry Golden), and ship captain Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin)—and they sail off to execute Operation Postmaster. On the way, they must stop at a Nazi prison island to rescue Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), March-Phillips’ trusted friend and a master planner. We also spend time with Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) and Marjorie Stewart (Eliza Gonzalez), British spies tasked with laying the groundwork and providing support for the mission on Fernando Po.
Credit: Lionsgate
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare draws heavily from influences such as 1961 WWII classic The Guns of the Navarone and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. The movie borrows especially liberally from the latter, hewing close to its humor and embrace of graphic violence. There’s an especially memorable, chilling scene in Ungentlemanly Warfare where Elza Gonzalez’s spy Marjorie Stewart has her first one-on-one conversation with Luhr, a ruthless and sadistic Nazi played by Til Schweiger, a man she must seduce, that reminds me of Inglorious Basterd’s famed opening with Christoph Waltz’s Colonel Hans Landa. Despite some very effective tension-raising sound design, the scene in Ungentlemanly Warfare fails to reach the heights of Tarantino’s work, as does the rest of the film.
Frequent Ritchie collaborator composer Chris Benstead scored the film mostly with music that could have been lifted directly from classic Ennio Morricone scores from spaghetti western films from the 1960s, which gives the film an old-school feel. This ties into the subdued, slower nature of the movie; it’s very by-the-numbers when compared to most of Guy Ritchie’s other, more bombastic work featuring snappy pacing and heavily stylized looks.
Credit: Lionsgate
Still, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare remains a very entertaining film—complete with an awkward title drop—carried by the charm of its cast and Henry Cavill’s glorious mustache. I enjoyed the film’s action sequences, particularly the prison camp breakout; some of those moments are among the movie’s best. I could watch Alan Ritchson murder Nazis with his bare hands all day and I left the movie wanting to spend more time with the characters. I’m hoping Guy Ritchie makes at least one sequel, even if at that point it’s a completely fictional story.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is in theaters now.
