Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ on VOD, in Which Guy Ritchie Directs A Fictional Spin on a Real-Life WWII Era Secret Spy Mission

Guy Ritchie has quietly become one of the current cinema’s most productive filmmakers: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is his sixth film in as many years, with several projects in the pipeline. On one hand, there’s no denying his capacity for slick craftsmanship; on the other, it may test our own capacity for flashy montages and irascible banter. Henry Cavill, one of Richie’s mainstay stars (Jason Statham must’ve been otherwise occupied, a dentist appointment or some PTO maybe), anchors this seafaring adventure very extremely loosely based on Operation Postmaster, a real-life World War II secret mission in which a small cadre of British soldiers endeavored to cripple a Nazi submarine base in Western Africa. Witty wisecracks, things blowing up, Nazis getting knifed – do we need anything more? The answer to that is a firm maybe. 

THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The first title card bellows, BASED ON A TRUE STORY. (Which makes this a BOATS movie with actual boats!) The second one says this is based on events culled from the files of Winston Churchill himself, declassified in 2016. The third one puts us on the Atlantic Ocean in Nazi-controlled waters in 1942, where the Nazi navy prepares to board a small fishing vessel. Two men are on board: Gus March-Phillips, played by Cavill with some rip-roaring mustaches, and if you’re wondering what makes “mustaches” different than “a mustache,” well, it has to do with the mustache leaping out and curling away from quite a mighty beard. The other is Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson of the Reacher TV series), who’s so ripped, it looks like he can juggle sperm whales. As the Nazis are all like PLEASE PRESENT YOUR PAPERS they’re all acting drunk, like OK WHATEVER HA HA HA, and, go figure, the head Nazi proves to not have much of a sense of humor. The rest of the scene goes poorly for the Nazis, because Gus and Anders’ pals are hiding in the hull and they start gunning down the boarding party as another pal plants bombs on the Nazi ship, sending it into the murky deeps. 

How did this plan come together? Well, it wouldn’t be a Guy Ritchie movie without a time hop to 25 DAYS EARLIER, when Gus was pulled from a prison for extra-dangerous men and given a suicide mission by the British brass: There’s this Nazi base on the island of Fernando Po, through which all the supplies for the German u-boat fleet are funneled. Those u-boats are a real pain in the ass, with their sneaky underwater travel and nasty ship-sinking torpedoes; they’re such an advantage, the Nazis have the Brits up against the ropes. Gus would be doing his country a big solid if he could assemble a crew and sneak in, blow up the supply stores and cripple the fleet. So Gus recruits Anders – nickname: The Danish Hammer – and a couple other ne’er-do-wells (played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Henry Golding) to help spring another ne’er-do-well (Alex Pettyfer) from a German prison to bolster their ranks, and so the movie has a key action set piece early on, thus tiding us over until the big one at the end.

This mission is so illegal and hush-hush, only a few irritating military bureaucrats are in on it, under the orders of Churchill himself (Rory Kinnear, piled with prosthetics); if a different set of irritating military bureaucrats find out about it, Churchill might even be ousted as Prime Minister. So, hey, no pressure. Meanwhile, two other spies aid the mission on the island: African casino owner Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) will throw a big party to distract the bad guys, and chanteuse Marjorie Stewart (Elza Gonzalez) hopes Nazi commander Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger, who was also in Inglourious Basterds) will be so hypnotized by some sideboob, he won’t know the base is under attack until it’s too late. If Gus and co. blow it, they’ll end up tortured by the Nazis. If they succeed, they’ll probably end up back in the British brig. But hey, at least they get another shot at doing what they do best: Walking nonchalantly away from explosions in slow motion.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Ritchie has always been accused of being a Tarantino acolyte, and this movie could easily be renamed Guy Ritchie’s Incongruous S.O.B.s. It also brings to mind bits of Dunkirk and Darkest Hour.

Performance Worth Watching: A too-many-characters problem leads to a movie full of anonymous performances. I guess Ritchson shows the occasional flash of charisma that makes you want to root for his towering-block-of-muscle to kill Nazis with oodles of gusto. 

Memorable Dialogue: In the opening scene, Gus jokingly urges the Nazi naval dorks to punish Anders: “Make him walk the plank. He loves wood!”

Sex and Skin: Nah.

Our Take: There’s no arguing against Ritchie’s skills as a visual stylist who can streamline an overcomplicated narrative into a rollicking adventure. And while he’s pretty much going through the motions with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, he’s nevertheless a distinctive filmmaker who stands a cut above most action-movie directors; his action sequences are always well thought-out and keenly choreographed, his edits amplifying movement instead of cutting it up into rapid-fire shards. This film, like every film he makes, has undeniable energy. It moves with intent and purpose.

Ritchie’’s intent is to entertain us, and Ministry just reaches that baseline goal. His purpose, though, is remarkably unambitious – to get to the end of the movie. Sure, we get a handful of laughs from the snarky dialogue and Anders’ OTT brutality (he’s a helluva archer), and the action is slickly executed, but it’s in the service of a movie that has nothing to say about anything whatsoever except, I guess, hooray for these unsung heroes of WWII, even though they were probably nothing like this at all. Maybe that’s the film’s central joke? Granted, Ritchie’s movies are frequently about little more than their own twisty storytelling and visual flair, but this one’s relatively stripped down (the montages and time hops are kept to a minimum) and lacks a magnetic central protagonist (Ritchie’s recent totally acceptable outings Wrath of Man and Operation Fortune at least gave us Jason Statham as a focal point). The irony here is undeniable: It feels like Ritchie’s playing it safe with a movie about guys who break the rules to get the job done. 

Our Call: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is perfectly acceptable disposable entertainment, but you’ll want to SKIP IT until you can watch it for free on a streaming service.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.