“And remember gentlemen, try to have fun.”
Not only is this a line of dialogue spoken by Henry Cavill’s dashing – not to mention highly unorthodox – Gus March-Phillips during the swaggering anarchy that is Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, but it also seems to have been a statement of intent for the director too. Based on the once highly secretive Operation Postmaster, a real life WWII heist that saw British operatives hurl away the rulebook, it seems like this was the sort of war film that Richie was born to helm – a rip-roaring comedy spy caper that adds lashings of cheeky defiance to classic, audacious, WWII men-on-a-mission films such as Where Eagles Dare, The Dirty Dozen and The Guns Of Navarone. However, since under performing in American theatres, Cavill’s cadre of suave spies would ultimately be tasked with assaulting the rest of the world from the more stealthily platform of Amazon Prime. A grave injustice, or a deserved demotion? Time to sign up and find out.
The year is 1941, and World War II is not only in full swing, but Hitler’s forces are regularly kicking the shit out of Great Britain on a near daily basis. The Luftwaffe is succeeding in its efforts to bomb London flatter than a Witherspoons pint and the numerous U-Boats that patrol the oceans have managed to thwart any attempt to get supplies to the battered country, thus causing the beleaguered population to starve. Even Winston Churchill himself is at siege, with his own advisors advocating that he surrender before the entire country is scrubbed off the map by the inexorable march of the Nazi jackboot. However, Churchill reasons that if the Germans can play dirty, so can he…
Cue Gus March-Phillips, a military man prone to not following orders and making up his own on a whim, who is given the mission to head on over to the Spanish controlled island of Fernando Po and disrupt the supply chain of those pesky U-Boats by any means necessary. He obviously won’t be also, so we’re introduced to a band of similar loose cannons – while SOE agents Marjorie Stewart and Richard Heron take a more direct route in by train in order to provide some Intel, Phillips’ band of Nazi-slaughtering rogues approach by sea, hoping to avoid both German and English patrols thanks to their highly illegal mission.
After Phillips; explosives expert Freddy Alverez; gargantuan Dane Anders Lassen and Irishman Graham Hayes take a quick detour to free imprisoned saboteur Geoffrey Appleyard, they forge on to their main goal – but can they complete the mission when SS commander and practicing sadist, Heinrich Luhr, is standing between them and a sunken supply ship?
There’s been a sense that, after his ascension into the realms of of mega-blockbuster with the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Aladdin, Guy Ritchie’s output has been kind of – bland? Oh, that cheeky chappie sense of humour is still intact and his unconventional storytelling style is very much present and correct, but when you compare such recent fare as Operation Fortune and, yes, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare with films like Snatch or Lock Stock, there’s definately a noticable disconnect at play. It’s a crying shame, because on paper, Ungentlemanly Warfare seems like the perfect type of war film for the Major of Mockney to sink his pearly whites into.
Based on Damien Lewis’ book, Churchill’s Secret Warriors, Ritchie takes the notion of a WWII era black ops team and winningly turns them into the machine gun carrying, war movie version of the type of lovable ruffians that usually inhabit his crime movies. They’re confident, loaded with endless snappy one liners and stride through proceedings with the smug air of one whose shit doesn’t stink and they also, unsurprisingly, just happen to be dashing and sexy as hell. Ritchie also seems keen to double down on making World War II fun again in the wake of less reverential takes such as Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and the MCU’s Captain America: The First Avenger, but while his inspiration obviously seems to be the former, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is missing a couple of vital weapons in its armoury.
The movie is unsurprisingly at its best when gleefully mowing down Nazis with a big fat smirk on its face, but while Ritchie’s brutal attempts to keep the Hun on the run prove to be as perky and robust as Henry Cavill’s extravagant facial hair, its forgotten to add that incredibly important ingredient to any man-on-a-mission movie: tension. So casual are the attempts of Cavill and company to single handedly decimate the german army, that it often feels like there’s about as much danger involved as bopping onto YouTube and watching a ten year-old do a Call Of Duty play though on easy setting. I mean, it looks good and all. Cavill is as unflappable as ever as he constantly strives to nab himself a SS officer jacket before the caper is through, and Reacher’s Alan Ritchson – here looking huge enough to rugby tackle a fucking tank – bloodily tears through the enemy like Jason Voorhees through a new season of campers; but at no point do we ever get an actual feel for our heroes as actual people beyond disinterestedly picking off guards with silencers or exchanging nonchalant banter. In fact, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer and Hero Fiennes Tiffin barely register as characters at all, beyond Golding constantly puffing on a pipe and Pettyfer being introduced while having his nipples electrocuted and if it wasn’t for Eiza González’s whole subplot about bamboozling Til Schweiger, there might not have been any feeling of risk at all.
Aside from all this, there’s the odd distracting performance (the usually dependable Rory Kinnear proves to be something of an off-putting Churchill) and a whole fuck-load of poetic licence that all seems put in place just to point out that Freddie Fox’s Ian Flemming went on to write books about a certain secret agent you may have heard of…
Taken on it’s own, somewhat shallow terms, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is admittedly a bit of a blast, but when it comes to shedding some light on the more shadier aspects of war, it’s disappointingly throwaway when you consider the talent involved.
I guess war needn’t necessarily be hell, but I would hope that it at least be a little bit tense…
🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 