Movie review
In the matter of “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” “The Guns of Navarone” got there first. “The Dirty Dozen” got there first. Heck, even the “Expendables” movies got there first. And of course the “Mission: Impossible” franchise is the quintessence of what “The Ministry” is selling. It’s right there in that title.
A small band of specialists with covert skills — explosives, electronics, planning, stabbings, shootings, etc. — go forth to do the impossible.
It’s a tried-and-true formula. This time it’s Guy Ritchie’s turn to give it a try.
His approach to the well-worn material is to invest it with humor. Send out a band of doughty rogues who laugh in the face of danger. Literally, as it happens. Yo hoo, Nazi scum. Ha ha ha ha! Take this! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat.
The thing about that (a-tat-tat-tat) is that it’s not nearly as consistently funny as Ritchie thinks it is. It’s forced. It’s uneven. It has a goal of lightheartedness, but it generally falls just a tad short. That’s something of a Ritchie trademark. He’s a middling director whose specialty is middling movies.
His first feature, 1998’s “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” remains by far his best. Cleverly scripted, expertly paced and very well-acted by performers who skillfully delineated distinctive, oddball characters. Since then, in big-budget, big-star productions like “Sherlock Holmes” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” he’s turned out smooth entertainments that broke no new ground.
So it is in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” It’s bright. It’s shiny. It’s essentially a variation on “The Guns of Navarone”: Commandos go behind enemy lines to sabotage a Nazi U-boat base in Africa and disrupt the sinkings of Allied shipping that were strangling the British war effort.
The script is derived from the 2016 nonfiction book “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops” by Damien Lewis. Churchill is in it, and so is Ian Fleming as a low-level British intelligence officer, who later will use what he learned in the spy sphere to create James Bond.
The commando outfit created at Churchill’s behest was the forerunner of the Brits’ formidable Special Air Service.
Key characters are based on actual individuals, including the mission leader Maj. Gus March-Phillipps played by Henry Cavill with a grin and impressively curled mustache ends, a jovial Danish cutthroat named Anders Lassen played by the massively muscled Alan Ritchson (currently cracking skulls and breaking spines in Prime Video’s “Reacher”) and Marjorie Stewart, a sultry femme fatale played by Eiza González. She’s a slinky figure, with a come-hither crimson-lipped smile and glossy raven tresses.
Among the fictional roles are an ultrasuave Black casino owner played by Babs Olusanmokun, whose drinking establishment looks like a fever-dream version of Bogart’s gin mill in “Casablanca,” and a Gestapo torturer played by Til Schweiger. He’s introduced washing blood off his hands in close-up. It’s that kind of movie.
The characters are just this side of caricatures, crossing over to a full-blown over-the-top portrayal in the case of Churchill, ludicrously overplayed by Rory Kinnear. Barely looks like the man.
The pacing is lazy, with our heroes striding right up to scores of Nazi soldiers and gunning them down in mass quantities. For variety, Ritchson’s character is on hand to slice throats and pierce people with arrows. He’s an archer, you see, and well, yes, that is indeed bizarre.
It’s an undeniably fun picture but rather too self-impressed. It’s Ritchie at his limited best.
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