At a critical juncture in the war, a plan is hatched to form a commando unit. This off-the-books assemblage of misfits and rogues (read: psychopaths) will launch guerrilla warfare on the Nazis from the shadows, denied official recognition from British armed forces. Who will lead this motley crew? Only one man right for the job, muses Brigadier Gubbins (Cary Elwes) – grinning rule-breaker Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill), currently cooling his heels in prison for reasons unknown. Summoned to meet with top brass about a covert mission (the real-life Operation Postmaster), Gus is heard before he’s seen, his shackles audibly jangling like spurs, in concert with Christopher Benstead’s spaghetti western flavored score. The audio cue is amusingly on-the-nose: Gus is an ungovernable gunslinger, but not without a code. In other words, a standard-issue Guy Ritchie hero.
“Standard-issue Guy Ritchie” applies to much of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which he adapted from Damien Lewis’ nonfiction book Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII (Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, and Arash Amel are also credited with the screenplay.) That’s not meant entirely as a dig. A magpie director with eclectic taste – who else can list two millennium-era gangster classics (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch), brawling Victorian mystery (Sherlock Holmes), and Disney live-action adaptation (Aladdin) all on one CV? – Ritchie brings a level of beyond-competence to every picture, elevating genre fare with energy, an inspired eye, a flair for casting. He is a master of glib entertainment, and that ain’t nothing. Just ask his former producer Matthew Vaughn, whose embarrassing Argylle, the spring’s other splattered-guts-jokey-jokey comedy-action mashup, fell way short of the mark.
The disappointment in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare lies in how much potential it had to be something more. There are unavoidable Inglourious Basterds parallels in plot and temperament – a bloodthirsty commando unit, a diabolical Nazi officer, a Jewish woman working undercover, a B movie relish for extreme violence – but Ministry lacks that film’s ambition and artistry. There’s enough ballast in the cast to keep things light and larky; Cavill, reconnecting with Ritchie after 2015’s underrated spy yarn The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Alan Ritchson (of Prime’s Jack Reacher), playing a Danish strongman out to avenge his Nazi-slain brother, are especially charming killers. (A blank Alex Pettyfer and pretty abominable Winston Churchill impression from Rory Kinnear are the only duds in the cast.) Points, too, to the sound design team that brings to flinching life the many sounds a body may make when it is shot through, sliced open, and axed to bits.
Thing is, there aren’t a lot of stakes to relentless hyperviolence where every character more or less moves through the movie with an air of supreme confidence. You know what’s a boring note to play for two hours? Nonchalance.
This article appears in April 19 • 2024.
