Once upon a time … in war-torn London, Winston Churchill found himself face to face with the potential end of England as he knew it. The Blitz was in full effect. Europe was slowly being crushed under Hitler’s boot heels. German U-boats had turned the Atlantic into a graveyard, effectively crippling the Allied war effort. The prime minister needed an effective counterpunch.
So he asked several officials within the nation’s intelligence community, including a naval officer named Ian Fleming, to help recruit soldiers, secret agents, scallywags, and — God help him — a movie star for a plan known as “Operation Postmaster.” The targets were seafaring vessels that had been delivering supplies to the Axis. Sink those ships and it might literally turn the tide in their favor. The linchpin of this classified attack behind enemy lines was one Gus March-Phillips, a veteran of commando raids and a gentleman who could easily engage in what Churchill dubbed “ungentlemanly warfare.” He was very much a real person, engaging in a very real fight to the death.
Whether or not this British military man actually had a penchant for waggling his tongue while machine-gunning the Gestapo, or sported a bushy rogue’s mustache over his stiff upper lip is immaterial; when you’re making a movie about the exploits of such larger-than-life characters, you hit the “puree” button on the facts and print the legend in 22-sized font. Besides, no one would ever mistake Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare for a biopic. A throwback WWII men-on-a-mission adventure marinated in modern bloodlust and movie references, this particularly pulpy take on a Dad Cinema staple couldn’t be more violent and more derivative of past works. It also couldn’t be more of a blast to watch if you enjoy a certain strain of carbon-dated derring-do mixed with cheeky carnage.
After Churchill (Rory Kinnear), Fleming (Slow Horses’ Freddie Fox), and a brigadier who conspicuously goes by the initial “M” (Cary Elwes) spring March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) from the clink and pitch him on the idea, he quickly assembles a team. Anders (Alan Ritchson) is a bulky Dane who’s handy with a knife and even handier with a bow and arrow. Freddy (Henry Golding) is an explosives expert. Henry (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is an Irish lad with a fishing trawler who can sail the gang through treacherous waters. Meanwhile, the duo of Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González), a starlet of stage and screen, and Heron (Dune’s Babs Olusanmokun), a man with connections both high and low, are slowly making their way to Fernando Po, an island under Nazi rule. This is where one of the supply ships is harbored, and they’re prepping everything so March-Phillips & Co. can, to put it delicately, blow a lotta shit up.
Once we’ve met this dirty half-dozen — which becomes a savage seven once they liberate Gus’ old buddy Geoffrey (Alex Pettyfer) from a Gestapo torture chamber — Ritchie sets these globetrotting Inglourious Basterds loose and lets them get around to the business of killing Nazis. Which they do, with extraordinary skill and little regard for the Marquees of Queensbury rules that characterize old-fashioned combat. The British filmmaker may have made a splash with his debut, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which added Cockney lad culture to the Nineties ironic crime thriller, and interspersed variations on that formula with for-hire franchise work involving Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur, etc., but he’s also been informally working through a checklist of what appears to be his favorite subgenres of the past, breezily blowing through Sixties espionage-a-go-go (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), Seventies revenge-o-matics (Wrath of Man), James Bond ripoffs (Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), and war-is-hell he-man dramas (The Covenant).
Now, blessed with based-on-a-true-story tale stranger than fiction — but not so strange that it can’t be extra-fictionalized in a way that amps up the adrenaline, the baroque set pieces, and the giddy thrill of watching Nazis eat hot lead — Ritchie dives headfirst into a classic WWII adventure. You’ll recognize the movie equivalent of winks, nudges, and footnotes, with visions of everything from Casablanca to The Guns of Navarone to The Dark of the Sun dancing through your head.
There is a more recent film that will inevitably spring to mind as you watch these archetypes strut, fret, and slaughter, however, and should you think comparisons to Inglourious Basterds are nothing but cheap shots, kindly note that Ritchie has cast I.B.’s own Til Schweiger as the main Nazi heavy. Even the title credit will seem awfully familiar-looking. Ministry exists so heavily under that previous work’s shadow, in fact, that you almost start to process everything like a second-generation echo: Cavill occasionally feels like he’s doing Michael Fassbender’s version of a British commando rather than March-Phillips, González seems to be channeling Diane Kruger’s seductive screen-goddess saboteur rather than Stewart, and so on. A number of scenes feel like slightly remixed takes from stand-out Basterds moments, which were themselves riffs on age-old clichés and tropes, yet the sensation of a viewing a copy of a copy of a copy never really goes away.
Yet the striking similarity to superior men-on-a-mission entries surprisingly doesn’t stifle the fun. And while you still wish that the movie’s screws were turned a little tighter, its elaborate skill-set setups had bigger payoffs (notably González’s stellar marksmanship), and it didn’t keep tripping over its own self-consciousness, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare does nail the rip-roaring flavor of yesteryear’s do-or-die romps. There’s a sense of cinephilic glee happening behind the camera that’s absent from so many of Ritchie’s gangsters-and-geezers flicks, and much like his equally gratifying Man From U.N.C.L.E., this History Channel-meets-Sam Peckinpah magnum opus brings out the best in his facilities. His fandom for these musty testosterone-fests is infectious.
So, for that matter, is the joy emanating from the cast as they cosplay their way through commando raids, double-agent seductions, and a TCM watch party’s worth of old-fashioned Hollywood conventions. Sporting a mustache that no amount of digital trickery could ever erase, Cavill convincingly gives you a man of action and anti-establishment insouciance. González knows how to turn on the sultry-siren charm while practicing chicanery for queen and country. The whole ensemble just revels in the over-the-topness of it all, but without sacrificing the tension or release needed to make movie-movies like this work. A pre-credits roll call of the IRL players reminds you that the heroism was genuine — this operation really did hand the Allies a major advantage — and also couldn’t be more superfluous. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare isn’t really a tribute. It just wants to uncork a vintage bottle of long-lost Saturday matinee thrills, served with a side of room-temp Karo syrup. To which we can only say, in our best Churchill accent: Mission accomplished.
