The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Exaggerated and Funny

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is an action-comedy film that tells the true story of a daring WWII mission led by Winston Churchill. A ragtag team of soldiers employs unconventional tactics to sabotage a crucial German U-boat resupply base.

The film portrays a highly stylized and unrealistic depiction of warfare. It shows an excessive violence and a disregard for historical accuracy. The body count is significantly like a video game. The characters lack depth. Ultimately, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” fails to capture the true spirit of the historical events it purports to depict.

Film Cast:

Directed by: Guy Ritchie. Screenplay by Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Arash Amel, and Guy Ritchie; Based on the book “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops” by Damien Lewis.

Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Guy Ritchie, Chad Oman, Ivan Atkinson, John Friedberg. Starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusamokun, Henrique Zaga, Til Schweiger with Henry Golding and Cary Elwes.

Film Summary

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is an action-comedy. It narrates the story of the first-ever special forces organization formed during WWII by Winston Churchill and some military officials, including author Ian Fleming. The top-secret combat unit goes on a daring mission against the Nazis. They use entirely unconventional and utterly “ungentlemanly” fighting techniques. Ultimately, their audacious approach changed the war’s course and laid the foundation for the British SAS and modern Black Ops warfare.

In 1942, with the Atlantic controlled by German U-boats, crippling Allied supply lines, Britain faced imminent defeat. A desperate Churchill authorizes a top-secret mission: Operation Postmaster. A ragtag team led by the charismatic Gus March-Phillips will sabotage a crucial German U-boat resupply base on the neutral island of Fernando Po. Facing insurmountable odds and numerous setbacks, including a daring rescue mission in enemy territory, the team infiltrates the island. They manage to hijack the German supply ship and two tugboats. They deal a devastating blow to the Nazi war machine. Though unauthorized and highly unconventional, the mission becomes a legendary feat of wartime sabotage.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Wrong Body Count

The body count is the significant difference between Guy Ritchie’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare(MUW) and the historical operation that the film depicts. There are other significant deviations between film and fact, to be sure. However, in the end, most of them return to the kills.

A clandestine and illegal operation, the ungentlemanly tactics: fighting incognito, non-attribution, hit-and-run tactics, deceit, ambush, sabotage, and espionage characterize the Postmaster. Such tactics were considered at the time to be dirty, mischievous, and best done by cads. Tellingly, the historical Operation Postmaster had zero casualties. But Ritchie’s Postmaster ignores the historical facts. It abandons the stealth and runs the mission through an enormous amount of deafening and conspicuous gunfire and high explosives. Moreover, it depicts a videogame portion of corpses.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Making Wrong Impression of War

It does depict the commandos killing a lot of Germans with a cavalier jocularity that would likely have offended their real-life counterparts. It would undoubtedly have offended Augustine, who insisted that the real evils of war are love of violence and revengeful cruelty. But these vices are on full display and are jarringly discordant with the film’s comedic elements.

The killing it depicts recognizes neither the enemy’s humanity nor the Allied cause’s nobility. The killed people fall like videogame props. Those who kill them too often do so in ways that would mock the professionalism of the vocation of arms if we took MUW at all seriously.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: An Impossible Action

This is a Guy Ritchie movie, and history only serves as a loose structure for many explosions, gunfights, and stabbings. The film has that cool Guy Ritchie swagger, where the protagonists never flinch at one failed Nazi sneak attack after the other. It shows Henry Cavill’s fancy coat upgrades after each mini-boss defeat.

It is an Impossible action, as five guys taking on hundreds of Nazi soldiers, and not a single lead character dies or suffers a wound.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: More of a Comedy

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is undue smug and has a tone of Suicide Squad. It lacks intelligent plotting, engaging dialogue, captivating characters, witty humor, expert pacing, unbearable tension, or palpable stakes. This film is an absolute disaster with nothing to make you care or even have some base fun. Watching the trailer is ten times better than sitting through this half-eaten crayon of a movie.

The plot does not help them because it is not so much on autopilot as crashing into a mountain. There are no stakes as Gus and his boys cut their way through scores of bad guys like they are in a video game. They take strolls through action sequences, never showing fear or concern, not seeming to take anything seriously. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare doesn’t want to be a comedy. It wants to be a serious men-on-a-mission movie with a comedic tone. It never once succeeds, and you don’t believe you’re watching a World War II adventure with the events better suited to a Looney Tunes cartoon, minus the fun and brains.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: Idiot Nazis

The villains’ lack of brains is observable. The entire plot of The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare hinges on every Nazi in the film being a blithering idiot. Nobody seems like they are even trying to stop the good guys, instead just standing around like dolts waiting for someone to shoot them. Several scenes should have ended in a significant character death because there is just no other way for the scene to go. The baddies let the heroes slowly take the upper hand, then obligingly get killed.

This leaves the actors nowhere. Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and the rest of the team have empty roles that give them nothing to work with. These are according to actual historical figures, and at the end, they give you one of those recaps of their lives with pictures of the actual people. However, they are not memorable due to the lack of resemblance between the real characters and those in the movie.

No Resemblance Between Characters and the Real Ones

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare by Guy Ritchie is based on actual events and people. But, like any movie adaptation, some things are fictionalized. Seeing significant differences between the appearances of real-life figures and the actors who portray them on screen is shared. ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ is no exception. Henry Cavill bears no resemblance to Major March Phillips; Alan Ritchson looks much more robust than the real Anders Lassen. Moreover, the role of the Englishwoman Marjorie Stewart, played by Latina Eiza Gonzalez, is even more jarring. It is something beyond these superficial appearances.

Henry Cavill’s version of March-Phillipp bears little resemblance to the man himself. As the film says, he married Marjorie Stewart (González) just a few months after the raid, and he died six months later. Far from Cavill’s tall, bearded, and extremely jacked ex-con, March-Phillips was slightly built with a neatly trimmed mustache. There’s also no evidence that March-Phillipps was ever in prison, as viewers find him at the start of “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”