Guy Ritchie Seems as Bored by ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ as We Are
Guy Ritchie loves movies about rough-and-tumble bros—or, rather, blokes—and at its best, his work generates amusing excitement from having tough guys band together to complete intricate and daring action-adventure missions. The director’s cinema is one of attitude and flair, and over the course of his prior three features (Wrath of Man, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, The Covenant), he’s moved confidently between stern and silly modes, all while maintaining the rugged swagger that has long been his trademark. Thus, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare would seem to be an almost ideal project for Ritchie—which is why its lethargy comes as such a dispiriting surprise.
A low-wattage affair that goes through the spy motions without ever providing more than formulaic reasons to care about its plot or its players, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (April 19, in theaters) is a dramatized real-life saga whose specifics were declassified by the British government in 2016. Loosely based on Damien Lewis’ book Churchill's Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII, it concerns Winston Churchill’s clandestine attempt to stave off the escalating Nazi threat by mounting an unauthorized exercise to end Hitler’s stranglehold on the Atlantic Ocean and, by doing so, to allow the United States to involve itself in the global conflict. Dubbed “Operation Postmaster,” it was an endeavor of the utmost secrecy and importance. Yet even though its characters repeatedly state those obvious facts to each other (and the audience), Ritchie’s film never feels like it has high stakes, largely because every element is dramatized as a cliché, devoid of personality or suspense.
With Nazi U-boats keeping America out of World War II, and with his cowardly commanders advising him to surrender to Hitler, Churchill (Rory Kinnear, in crummy make-up) decides that victory hinges on destroying this oceanic blockade. To turn the tide, he devises a plan to neuter the U-boats by blowing up the Duchess, the Italian cargo ship that provides the German submarines with supplies. The Duchess is refueled and restocked in the neutral West African coastal island of Fernando Po, and on the recommendation of his co-conspirators Brigadier Gubbins “M” (Cary Elwes) and Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox)—as in, the future creator of 007—Churchill enlists the services of Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill), a convict who doesn’t follow orders and derives great grinning-with-his-tongue-out pleasure from killing Nazis.