‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ 4K UHD (Blu-ray review)

Lionsgate

Guy Ritchie returns with yet another of his trademark action capers, this time turning his attention to the declassified files of Winston Churchill, which upon their declassification in 2016 revealed details about some of the more unusual characters the British Prime Minister utilized to combat the Nazi regime.

Set in 1942, Henry Cavill’s Gus March-Phillips leads a rogue band of operatives eager to dispatch as many Nazis as they can get their hands on, and the group are soon on their way to carry out Operation Postmaster, where they must commandeer Italian and German ships from the harbor of Fernando Po off the coast of West Africa.

Placing itself somewhere at the intersection of Inglourious Basterds and the Kingsman films, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare has Guy Ritchie written all over it, for better and for worse.

There are rugged, manly men gleefully killing as many foes as they can muster, all the while quipping slyly in posh British accents and expecting the viewer to suspend disbelief to varying degrees as the action sequences play fast and loose with the concept of realism.

While the action set pieces are entertaining enough, where the film struggles is with sustaining any meaningful sense of tension in the surrounding scenes.

Clocking in with a runtime of two hours, the film is not so much overly long as it is – outside of a few scenes here and there – simply not intense enough, and while it does not make the film trite to sit through as such, it does, however, make it a very forgettable affair.

The cast are game and make the film easy to watch, but the narrative framework is flimsy, leaving the characters overly caricatural to the point of being pretty cardboard cutouts devoid of any meaningful human emotion.

In turn, this lowers the stakes, and what we are left with is a film that relies on its action sequences and trademark Guy Ritchie dialogue to engage the audience, and while the film does manage to be fun in terms of these aspects, unfortunately, this also makes the film feel superficial and inconsequential, which does not mesh well with the suspense a WWII special forces action caper should seek to provoke in the viewer.

This theme of fun but inconsequential popcorn entertainment also stretches to the action scenes in the sense that while watching Nazis get their comeuppance is always fun, the approach to the violence and gore is simply too sleek and soft for what an R-rated film can get away with, ultimately making the action superficial and forgettable in spite of the playfulness with which it is executed.

Extras include featurette and trailer.

While the heyday of Guy Ritchie films seems to be a thing of the past, the filmmaker nonetheless retains his own distinct style, and even though The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is not among Ritche’s best work, the film’s redemption lies in the ruggedly handsome charm of a committed cast who smirk, quip and murder their way through Nazis, and while that may not make the film particularly memorable, it is at least rather entertaining to witness.

Verdict: 6 out of 10.