Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Ritchie pays stylized homage to real-life WWII operatives
Guy Ritchie’s latest,
“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” is at once his “Inglourious Basterds” and his “Dunkirk.” With his adaptation of the nonfiction book “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops” by historian and war reporter Damien Lewis, Ritchie borrows Quentin Tarantino’s winking postmodern retro style to pay homage to real-life British war heroes with the same reverence that Christopher Nolan paid to the heroes of Dunkirk.
The English filmmaker started out with cheeky crime comedies (“Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” “Snatch”) and has dabbled in historical bombast (“King Arthur,” “Sherlock”), Disney remakes (“Aladdin”) and to diminishing returns, more recent crime comedies (“The Gentleman,” “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre”). But Ritchie finds a nice groove with this entertaining World War II not-quite-comedy. There’s a glee in the Nazi killing and an exceptionally dry humor that is English through and through, but he rides the line between self-serious and self-consciously humorous.
If Tarantino uses a stylistic pastiche of exploitation films and spaghetti Westerns to rewrite history, Ritchie borrows Tarantino’s approach to perform a kind of pulpy myth-making and celebrate a group of undersung war heroes who may have inspired Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
Though it is not named as such in the film, which is heavily imagined and fictionalized with the addition of new characters, the script by Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Arash Amel and Ritchie essentially follows the 1942 secret special operations mission known as Operation Postmaster. Concerned about German U-boats, which had throttled the English’s ability to receive supplies, Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) gives the go-ahead to hire the right man to target an Italian freighter loaded with U-boat supplies. Cripple the U-boats, open the channel.
The man chosen is the incarcerated Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill). He assembles his team of expert rapscallions, including Danish warrior Anders (Alan Ritchson), explosives expert Freddy (Henry Golding) and Irish sailor Henry (Hero Fiennes Tiffin). On the way to the Spanish island of Fernando Po, they’ll stop to pick up Geoffrey (Alex Pettyfer), imprisoned as a POW in a Nazi outpost.
While Ritchie structures the film around tense conversations and bursts of violence, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” isn’t that suspenseful.
In an opening sequence, we see our special forces team dispatch a group of German sailors with amateurish theater and a dose of firepower. No one breaks a sweat, no one raises their voices, they never run out of ammo, and even in extreme situations there’s time for droll Britishisms.
Ritchie positions these heroes as untouchable warriors, mowing down Nazis without ruffling their mustache hairs. It’s all a part of the fantasy he spins through style and reference. This isn’t an authentic representation of World War II; it’s an imagining of what this story would be like as a ’70s exploitation flick.
Even if the heavy stylization leaves the film feeling a bit arch, there’s a real affection in Ritchie’s homage to these soldiers, making them larger-than-life film heroes and letting the audience in on the fun. You’re only left wanting more time with this team.
(In English, German and Spanish, with English subtitles)
MPA rating: R (for strong violence throughout and some language)
Running time: 2:00
How to watch: In theaters