The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare has a concept that would make for a perfect Guy Ritchie movie (or one that Quentin Tarantino already made), but it doesn’t feel particularly hardened, madcap, or imaginative. Based quite loosely on discovered and declassified documents from late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s archives that were made public in 2016, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare traces its roots not only back to World War II, but to a real life person and situation that inspired the James Bond character. For a filmmaker who likes their bloody violence with a sense of suave dapperness, such as story sound like fertile ground for Ritchie (Snatch, The Gentlemen), but the final results are a bit of a shrug when compared to some of the director and co-writer’s past works and the potential of the material itself.
Set in the early 1940s before the United States entered the “war to end all wars,” The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is set during a dire low point in British history. The Germans have the UK on the ropes, with some members of parliament suggesting they kowtow to the might Hitler’s advancing forces. Churchill (Rory Kinnear, a fine actor playing possibly the worst approximation of the PM ever put to film) knows that beating the Nazis means he’ll have to play a little dirty. Churchill enlists the off-the-books help of Brigadier General Gubbins (Cary Elwes) and Lt. Commander Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox) to put together a team that can carry out a top secret mission in the neutral waters off the coast of Africa. The goal: to stop German supply boats from reaching deadly U-boat submarines. Gubbins and Fleming turn to imprisoned and disgraced Major Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) to lead the team, precisely because he’s not one for following orders, and he has no problem going into battle being outnumbered 200 to 5. While Phillips assembles a dream team of killers and technicians (Alan Ritchson as a behemoth Danish hard-ass and archer, Alex Pettyfer as an uncrackable loyalist to the cause, Henry Golding as a frogman and explosives expert, Hero Fiennes Tiffin as… I dunno, a really good soldier, I guess), two other government agents (Eiza González, Babs Olusanmokun) go undercover to make the team’s job easier and secure necessary intel.
From the opening, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (which garnered a theatrical release in the U.S. this spring, but skipped straight to streaming in Canada) takes the appearance of an Inglorious Basterds riff, or like a less gonzo version of the kinds of militaristic spy films Ritchie’s fellow countryman and sometimes collaborator Matthew Vaughn likes to make. While all of that has been done better before, it still provides some potential for a rip-snorting good time. Sadly, that never materializes. Not big on historical or logical accuracy, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is only fun or intriguing in fits and starts, with the novelty of its sequences not even lasting for entire scenes. Most of the film’s charms are supplied by the witty, intelligent performances turned in by Cavill, Ritchson, and Golding (who is the biggest standout as a low-key deranged arsonist), not the material or the exploits of the team itself.
The script from Ritchie, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson (Air Bud, The Fighter, Patriots Day), and Arash Amel (A Private War) is a tonal mess that fails to generate much momentum, even when the proceedings take a turn into unlikely heist movie territory during the film’s second half. The initial promise of watching a bunch of swarthy dudes sailing the high seas, pulling off daring raids, and amassing a huge body count sounds like tantalizing action movie fodder, but The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare grows duller over time rather than more exciting. There are too many moving parts in Ritchie’s latest that the script can’t keep track of, and all momentum stops dead whenever the story has to cut back to the adventures of González and Olusanmokun, who are fine performers crammed into an already bloated narrative like square pegs into round holes. Nothing about The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare moves swiftly, and it often buckles under the weight of the narrative. Ritchie’s latest doesn’t know if it wants to be a serious spy thriller, a comedic lark, or a bloodthirsty action picture.
Making matters worse, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare bears little of the signature (and sometimes unfairly derided) stylistic panache Ritchie has employed over the years to great effect. The characters and snappy dialogue feel like a Ritchie work, but the leaden pacing and drab visuals suggest a filmmaker on autopilot throughout. Maybe he’s letting his actors take the reigns a bit more here, but they can’t do all the heavy lifting for the lacking script. By the time Ritchie reaches his less than memorable conclusion, the film ends up feeling phoned in, despite having a decent number of technical resources at the director’s disposal. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare has a good premise, and while it isn’t Ritchie’s worst, it’s definitely one of his most forgettable.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is now available to stream in Canada on Prime Video.
