Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and Guy Ritchie Take Down Nazis the Old-Fashioned Way
DIRECTOR: GUY RITCHIE/2024
Will we ever run out of World War II movies? Hollywood has been making them almost since it found its groove, but I’m happy to say it hasn’t depleted them yet.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare looks into a little-known episode in which a small, ragtag team undermined Germany’s dominance in the Atlantic, paving the way for the Americans to turn the tide of the war. Its leader: Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill), a troublemaker whose unorthodox style is just what the Brits need to for a covert operation. In his crew: a guy who shoots both guns and arrows (Alan Ritchson), a guy who blows stuff up (Henry Golding), two more guys good with weapons (Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Alex Pettyfer), an actress (Eiza González), and a professional spy (Babs Olusanmokun). Their mission: to destroy essential U-Boat supplies sitting in an African harbor.
There’s no point in naming these characters—Ungentlemanly Warfare makes no time to develop them in its two hours, and it’s all the better for it. This movie is selling itself to you (and your dad) as an opportunity to watch Superman and Jack Reacher kill a bunch of Nazis—who needs back story to motivate that? With a charismatic cast and an overqualified director, this action-adventure is plenty fun, and though it’s not as innovative as Guy Ritchie’s most-watched films, he still finds opportunity for his signature panache in staging a giant costume party, a montage recruiting the team, and plenty of not-so-subtle connections to 007. (Among them, Winston Churchill is played by Rory Kinnear, who has appeared in every James Bond entry since Quantum of Solace, and Tiffin is the nephew of Ralph Fiennes, another regular in Daniel Craig’s series.)
Even with the consistent number of World War II movies we get every year, Ungentlemanly Warfare harkens back to a style we don’t see so much anymore. In a post-Spielberg era, the subgenre has bent toward grit and themes of social justice—which, to be clear, are more than necessary—but remember the 1960s when they were a thrill? (I, of course, am speaking proverbially as I was not alive for Hogan’s Heroes.) Though our movie star leads didn’t always avert tragedy, who can forget Steve McQueen jumping a motorcycle in The Great Escape, Burt Lancaster derailing a heist in The Train, or Lee Marvin crashing a Nazi party in The Dirty Dozen? The film I thought of most was The Guns of Navarone, but I also couldn’t help but think of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The classic Ungentlemanly Warfare pays its most overt homage to is Casablanca. That film finds significantly more depth, but between the two, I know which one I’ll never be able to skip while scrolling through cable.