“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” (2024) is the latest Guy Ritchie movie, which is allegedly a dramatized adaptation of Damien Lewis’s 2014 book, “Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII” even though the film notes that Winston Churchill’s files were not declassified until 2016. Ritchie has discovered time travel. Bravo! The flick fictionalizes Operation Postmaster, a British special operation that occurred on Fernando Po, a neutral, Spanish island off the coast of West Africa. Set in 1942, a group of insubordinate outlaws and spies need to turn the tide and stop the Nazi U-boats from dominating the Atlantic Ocean. Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) permits Brigadier Gubbins (Cary Elwes) or M into recruiting a team to conduct the “unsanctioned, unofficial and unauthorized” mission. Anyone who accepts could face jail if the official British armed forces catch them or or death if the enemy does. The stakes are high, but not suspenseful in this entertaining movie.
Ritchie’s film is an old-fashioned throwback with beefy he-men leading the charge. The incarcerated Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill) is released prematurely to lead the team in the water. During his recruitment, he treats a conference room at the London-based Special Operation Executive Headquarters like his personal store. Finally, Cavill is not stuck with an awful hairdo, and he does his best Jason Momoa impression while mowing down Nazis. Cavill looks like he is having fun. “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is his second spy movie of 2024, and his character allegedly inspired James Bond—always a bridesmaid, never a bride. His right-hand man, Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), who makes Gus seem comparatively small, is like a hunky Legolas who prefers arrows and knives over guns. Only his good-humor and camaraderie match his brutality, which makes him a friendly giant to those on his side. Arsonist Freddy Alvarez (an unrecognizable Henry Golding sporting facial hair) loves swimming and setting explosives. Irishman Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is an expert sailor. The first step in their mission is to rescue Geoffrey “Apple” Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), whom the Nazis caught, and the Gestapo are interrogating.
Their advance team heads to the destination via rail while picking up intel every step of the mission. Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun), who runs an establishment entertaining anyone who comes ashore, is paired with Marjorie Stewart (Eliza Gonzalez doing her best Angelina Jolie impression). Marjorie is a British woman with German Jewish roots, a stunning soldier, multilinguist and a honeypot who is limiting her job to flirting with Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger), who prefers torture to partying.
The script has flaws. The dialogue feels as if there will be later revelations about how Gus landed behind bars, and Apple wound up in Nazi hands, but no. Marjorie seemed like she had elaborate plans for her Nazi target, but the resolution speeds by though the audience loved it and offered its first and only applause at the comeuppance moment. No one will notice these plot holes because the story is seemingly inconsequential fun. Any accusations of feeling like a watered down “Inglorious Basterds” (2009) can be somewhat deflected since this film is not alternate history, but a dramatization-still different to history, but hues close enough to key events to avoid being an alternate history film. It follows the overall beats of World War II. Hitler does not die here, but scores of Nazis do. It is tame for a Ritchie film, and the violence is played for laughs. Killing Nazis is fun with no emotional repercussions for this team.
“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a pastiche of genres. It is a World War II movie with a great soundtrack that makes it sound like a Western. Ritchie’s exaggerated history falls in line with his usual ethos as a regressive progressive except instead of pairing gangsters with aristocrats as he did in “The Gentlemen” (2019), it is outlaws with government officials. He loves aristocratic accessories in the hands of men without such a bearing or pedigree. His interpretation of history appears to be more superficially diverse than reality, which is unusual. It is usually the reverse: historical events had more diverse players than the film portrays—we’re looking at you, Christopher “Dunkirk” Nolan.
Gus’ equal on the African side is Kambili Kalu (Danny Sapani), a self-styled prince who traffics in guns, and they get on well sharing similar tastes, upbringings, and countercultural choices. Gus offers to supplement Gus’ group and an impressive array of his men line up except unlike Gus’ men, they are not individuated except for Adedayo (Alessandro Babalola), who issues orders and is bilingual. When the chief mission is at hand, the prince’s men pay the price and are casualties whereas Gus’ men only appear to be in peril or get wounded. It is the same old, same old with more camaraderie and less obsequious, obvious servitude. You get to be represented if you know your place.
Ritchie is not unique in using his camera and narrative to ogle the Smurfette of the group. Like “The Gentlemen,” she is simultaneously the most versatile and competent member and vulnerable due to her gender. The threat of rape and torture is the sword of Damocles that Marjorie faces plus stifling her general revulsion for such an odious person, but her gender is not the ostensible issue—it is her Jewish heritage. So, Ritchie disguises his customary prurient fascination with sexual violence with historical bias.
It is distinctive for Ritchie to make a film with Nazis who seem to enjoy socializing with Black people whether British or African. The one Spanish official, Captain Binea (Henrique Zaga), had a revulsion based on class more than race and did not want people beneath his rank touching him if they were not giving him what he wanted—the color of their skin was obviously a coincidence. German colonialists practiced genocide in Namibia long before World War II and treated African Germans in Germany poorly so it did strain belief that Mr. Heron and others could socialize and face little to no racism unless their neutrality became debatable.
Sembene Ousmane’s “Camp de Thiaroye” (1989) chronicled the post-war treatment of African troops who fought under the French command who like to pretend that they do not have an issue with race, yet the French massacred the African veterans who served them faithfully. Allied forces well known for treating Black people who fought for them worse than German prisoners of war, so it does strain suspension of disbelief that racism against Black people was not an issue for either side. It is not simply aspirational, but an erasure of history and the present, however the role of Black people in this operation is unclear so let’s call it a draw.
“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is less like a zucchini brownie than a brownie with a zucchini on top to rationalize that a popcorn movie has a sliver of educational value. It gets points for depicting the internal conflict among the British over whether to take the path of appeasement/surrender or war. It is a satisfying romp of a heist movie that lays out the plan then puts the pieces into place with room for error so the unreasonably attractive heroes can showcase their wits, physical prowess and improvisational skills. Fun and forgettable.