Storming into theaters this weekend to play alongside murky, politically fraught films like Civil War, there’s something comfortingly simple and familiar about a historical action flick dedicated entirely to coming up with ways to kill Nazis. From Inglorious Basterds to last year’s Sisu, it’s a subgenre that’s existed for decades—and Guy Ritchie is finally throwing his hat in the Nazi-stomping ring with The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare. But while its loquacious title may promise an action spectacle full of (if nothing else) down-and-dirty fight scenes, Ungentlemanly Warfare is a remarkably tame, tepid offering from Ritchie with a paper-thin script and a misguided cast.
Starring Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, and Eiza González, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare (based incredibly loosely on the real-life Operation Postmaster) follows the titular Ministry, a group of British operatives working in secret during WWII to conduct secret, high stakes missions by direct order of Winston Churchill. Tasked by Churchill to sink a key Nazi cargo liner, the Duchessa, off the coast of Fernando Po island, Gus March-Phillipps (Cavill) assembles an unlikely crew to commit a seemingly impossible attack-turned-heist.
The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is no doubt working off a successful formula: Guy Ritchie has carved himself a niche in churning out mid-budget uber-violent, passably stylized action flicks every year or so (Operation Fortune, Wrath Of Man, The Gentleman, etc), many of which feature a recurring cast including Cavill, Henry Golding, and Cary Elwes, all of whom return here. Between Ritchie’s well-liked house style and the aforementioned American affinity for watching Nazis get the stuffing beat out of them on the big screen, the film is set up for success—but it never reaches beyond familiar low-hanging fruit.
Many of Ungentlemanly Warfare’s problems can be traced back to its underbaked script—it took a trio of scribes (Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, and Arash Amel) in addition to Ritchie to churn out the film’s screenplay, and the utter lack of any singular voice shows. Aside from a single character trait pre-determined by the real-life operative on which each character is based (“buff archer,” “jaunty hat,” “woman”) The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare makes no effort to explore this cast of characters whatsoever.
Cavill’s cheery, mustachioed Gus is the de-facto leader of the group (his history-assigned character trait was the jaunty hat), but other than the fact that he snags said hat from a corpse in the first act, there’s no indication of who Gus is as a person, what motivates him, or where he comes from. This is true for his other brothers-in-arms (Ritchson, Tiffin, Golding) as well—they’ve all got one reliable way to contribute to the group, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a single line of dialogue exploring the personality and history of these gun-toting renegades.
The milquetoast writing of the ensemble cast is made all the more apparent whenever Danny Sapani’s charismatic arms dealer Kalu is around—the paradoxically aristocratic criminal oozes charm and sells every line with panache. In the precious few seconds the film does devote to exploring the camaraderie between its heroes, Ritchson and Golding give a tantalizing taste of what a more character-focused version of the film might look like. But even that singular, flirty flash of personality is gone almost as quickly as it arrives.
Having a cast of forgettable cardboard cutouts as characters might be forgivable had Ungentlemanly Warfare at least been reliable in its ability to deliver creative, brutal action sequences. That brings us to the film’s other great failing—the action. As the film’s title so desperately wants the audience to remember, this is an organization of operatives whose single unifying trait is that they’re nasty, underhanded fighters—yet the action is all too forgettable.
Maybe the caliber for surprising, shocking action sequences has risen in recent years, or maybe the bar for Nazi killing was set too high by other previous genre entries, but the action in Ungentlemanly Warfare feels predictable and by the numbers—hardly the kind of clever, merciless killing one would expect from a Ministry of “Ungentlemanly Warfare.” Despite the R rating, there are few truly memorable kills or fight sequences to be found. The closest the film comes to truly making use of the “R” is a single cutaway shot used to highlight the atrocities committed by the sadistic Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger, who actually was in Inglorious Basterds).
Though our undercover Jewish heroine/honeypot Marjorie (Gonzalez) never actually finds herself at the mercy of Luhr’s nightmarish torture/sex dungeon, it’s still off-putting that the only time the film truly commits to imagery nearing stomach-churning, it’s violence being perpetrated by Nazis, not against them. As far as villains go, Schweiger gives admirable effort in selling Luhr’s should-be menacing dialogue, but his conversations with Marjorie are particularly and singularly baffling.
Filled to the brim with messy, overlong metaphors about vixens and foxes, every Marjorie/Luhr interaction (and unfortunately there are many) finds new ways for the characters to smirk and deliver pseudo-intellectual anecdotes at each other. It’s a baffling subplot, made all the more exhausting by the outdated manner in which Gonzalez is sidelined (relegated to slinking around in a gown while the men do the hand-to-hand combat) and the ill-advised English accent she’s putting on.
In truth, there is nothing downright mean-spirited or harmful about The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare. It’s satisfyingly paced, a fine way to ogle at Alan Ritchson’s massive muscle and tiny glasses, and yes, plenty of Nazis meet violent ends. But there’s no intentionality behind Ungentlemanly Warfare, no perspective or passion to drive what should be a gleefully schadenfreude-filled time at the movies. With the exception of a scene-stealing Danny Sapani, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a forgettable action vehicle ferrying a gaggle of uninspired rascals.