‘The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ Review – Guy Ritchie’s Stylish And Scattered Wartime Spy Caper

Photo Credit: Dan Smith For Lionsgate

Consider this: you are the prime minister of a global superpower, locked in a devastating war with a nation determined to conquer the European continent and remake it in its image. You’re on the verge of losing the war because your opponent has made American intervention near-impossible with their command of the Atlantic Ocean with their devastating U-boats. Your cabinet is just about ready to sue for peace, all but guaranteeing the collapse of the global order. So, what do you do?

You corral a bunch of vaguely anarchist mercenaries who love sticking their tongues out and stealing fashionable coats from their enemies, of course.

That is Winston Churchill’s damned-if-you-do situation in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Guy Ritchie’s film follows the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a covert organization founded during World War II composed of ragtag heroes unencumbered by the traditional rules of combat. With group leader Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) at the helm, the SOE embark on Operation Postmaster, a secret mission to destroy a fleet of U-boats off the coast of Axis-occupied Africa. Supporting March-Phillips and his crew is Marjorie Stewart (Eiza Gonzalez), a Jewish undercover agent who must cozy up to Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger), a sadistic Nazi operative. The SOE’s collective efforts on sea and land, in what would be known as Operation Postmaster, played a significant role in the Allies’ eventual victory.

Except that, for much of its runtime, Ungentlemanly Warfare doesn’t feel like a collective. Ritchie basically splits his film in two, alternating between Gus’s maritime shenanigans and Marjorie’s honeypot mission on Fernando Po. The side that works best is the one led by Gus. It’s where Ritchie digs deep into his bag of stylish irreverence, channeling the crew’s gleeful chaos in his brash and sassy direction. His camera is playful but thoughtful in how he stages the film’s action set pieces. The opening battle on Gus’s boat with a Nazi regiment is a fist-pumping comedy of arrogant errors that also details why the ministry is good as what they do. A Nazi camp siege to rescue comrade Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) is even better, perfectly demonstrating the team’s remarkable skill and utter unseriousness.

Gus’s team is so delightful and absurd to watch that it’s baffling how little we see of them. (Or at least it feels that way.) Ritchie loses his fluidity in the muck of political maneuvering and worldbuilding. He spends more time than necessary contextualizing the ministry’s role in the war, prominently featuring war cabinet meetings with Churchill and his deputies. Compared to the maritime battles, these scenes are dull and eat away at the thrilling momentum. What’s marginally more successful but also ill-fitting is Marjorie’s half of the film. Marjorie’s plot often feels tangential to the overall mission of destroying the U-boats, and Ritchie doesn’t craft many strong moments for her character to thrive outside of the femme fatale archetype. (One exception is Marjorie’s tete-a-tete with Heinrich where she reveals she is Jewish, but then plays it as a joke.The tense, unsettling moment is also Eiza Gonzalez’s best scene.)

The split attention away from Gus’s team makes it hard to glean who they are and why they work together. The film yearns for more scenes of them together, reminiscing or bonding about their experiences together. Ritchie only offers tantalizing glimpses of their relationships, like Anders Lassen’s (Alan Ritchson) playful (and perhaps serious) flirting with Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding), and Guy’s genuine respect and deference towards Kambili Kalu (Danny Sapani). The crew clearly have a great rapport, united in their disinterest in authority, which makes the time away from them all the more frustrating. You wish that either Ritchie and his three co-writers tightened the connection between Gus and Marjorie’s stories, or that they made more narrative room for the ministry. (One point for the former: Gus and Marjorie wed in real life, but the film doesn’t establish any real romantic tension between them.)

It’s a shame that Ritchie struggles to balance his sprawling ensemble, because his cast is game for his shenanigans. Ritchie further proves that he is one of the few filmmakers who can use Henry Cavill effectively. A departure from his debonair work in Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Cavill goes all-in on the wacky and unflappable Gus. He isn’t afraid to look and sound as weird as Ritchie needs him to be, and that lack of self-consciousness plays very well on screen. It is one of his most enjoyable performances to date. Eiza Gonzalez doesn’t quite have Cavill’s presence to carry her part of the film, but she is very good when she breaks from the seductress archetype and conveys unnerving menace. The film’s MVP is Alan Ritchson, who manages to out-weird Cavill with a gleeful bloodlust that both fits and subverts his hulking frame.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is classic Guy Ritchie, for better or worse. It is a sleek, occasionally explosive thrill ride that gets a lot of mileage out of its cheeky atmosphere. A tighter narrative focus would’ve greatly benefited the film, allowing us to get to know his charismatic, motley crew. However slight it may be, it is very easy to get swept up in the bombs and tongues (specifically Cavill’s) flinging across the screen.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare will debut exclusively in theaters on April 19, 2024, courtesy of Lionsgate.