The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Guy Ritchie gets an "A-Team" of "Inglourious Basterds" together for his loosely based on a true story World War II lark.
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Being a dude whose Dad weaned him on 1960s men-on-a-mission movies such as “The Great Escape” and “The Dirty Dozen” and whose film fandom led him to Guy Ritchie’s flicks in the late 1990s and early aughts, it’d seem as though Ritchie’s “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” (now in theaters) was tailor-made for me … and in a lot of respects it is.
Unbeknownst to me, this was loosely based on a true story. Henry Cavill stars as Gus March-Phillips, an imprisoned British soldier who’s been selected to lead a dangerous, classified mission by Brigadier Gubbins AKA ‘M’ (Cary Elwes) and his underling Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox, currently doing double duty here and on Ritchie’s Netflix series “The Gentlemen”) … yes, that Ian Fleming … on behalf of Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear under scads of makeup).
March-Phillips has been tasked with taking out a trio of ships anchored alongside the African island of Fernando Po slowing Germany’s access to Atlantic waters and prompting America’s entrance to World War II.
March-Phillips insists that in order to do so he’ll need to work with his own people. They are the bow-wielding Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson, “Reacher”) AKA the Danish Hammer, explosives expert/frogman Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding, reuniting with Ritchie after “The Gentlemen”) and March-Phillips’ dearly departed best friend’s younger sailor brother Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin, nephew of Ralph and Joseph). The quartet will need to spring military strategist Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer, looking great and making a comeback of sorts to mainstream moviemaking) from Nazi capture prior to arriving at Fernando Po for planning purposes.
Running interference for March-Phillips and his men on Fernando Po are bootlegger and nightclub owner Heron (Babs Olusanmokun, reuniting with Ritchie after “Wrath of Man”) and actress/singer-turned-spy Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González, a bombshell who looks like she stepped off the side of a bomber). Stewart’s a crack shot (and I could watch González blow the smoke away from a gun’s barrel all damned day), but her primary purpose is to distract über Nazi Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger – it’s rich watching him play this part after seeing him essay the role of chief Nazi dispatcher Hugo Stiglitz in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”).
There’s an awful lot about “TMoUW” that I greatly admire. Cavill, reuniting with Ritchie for the first time in almost 10 years after the amusing and underrated television adaptation “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” is a live-wire early and the introduction of March-Phillips is a hoot and a half. March-Phillips (and Cavill by extension) mellows in the second half and the picture follows suit. The crazier this thing gets the better it is. That’s probably why I love Ritchson’s Lassen so much. All of the best action comes from his character. I just wish a lot of this action were captured more clearly. I saw the film in Dolby Cinema (one of the best presentations out there) and yet a lot of the conclusion came across as too dark.
“TMoUW” feels like “Inglourious Basterds” filtered through an episode of “The A-Team.” It’s a stirring reminder of just how f*cking awesome silencers are and makes me excited for Ritchie, Cavill and González to reteam for next year’s “In the Grey.”