Guy Ritchie’s Plucky WWII Men on a Mission Caper ’THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE’ Revels in Nazi Slaughter

Gus March-Phillips is putting together a team. His collection of ex-military undesirables are a rag-tag team of muscle-bound rapscallions, culled from the ranks of the British and other E.U. Armed Forces Units for their insubordination, trigger-happy nature, and general rancor. Their mission: to carry out a top-secret plot to disrupt the Nazi U-boat supply chain, thereby freeing the Atlantic from their reign of underwater terror and allowing for reinforcements from their eager American allies. The execution of said mission is workmanlike and slapdash, both as carried out by the involved parties and by director Guy Ritchie.

The latest from the prolific Ritchie, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a plucky action-comedy that gleefully revels in stylish Nazi slaughter while falling notably short in important areas like character development and narrative stakes. With an expansive ensemble cast that includes a very-much-game Henry Cavill, Reacher‘s hulking Alan Ritchson, Eiza González, Alex Pettyfer, Babs Olusanmokun, Cary Elwes, Henry Golding, Rory Kinnear, Til Schweigher, and Freddie Fox, the script fails to imbue any of these characters with much in the way of personality, beyond their prolific killing capacity. As the movie zips along, the script’s inability to give much dimension to these characters or any sense of danger to their mission makes the whole thing feel rather slight, though still a mostly entertaining enough distraction.

Co-writers Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, and Arash Amel keep the events of the film glossy and surface-level. The titular Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is tasked with infiltrating a Nazi-occupied African coastal city, very much à la Casablanca, with a two-pronged approach. While the group of beefy white men sail south with the intention of sinking the Nazi’s fleet of supply ships, Olusanmokun’s Heron and González’s Marjorie Stewart must infiltrate the Nazi ranks to draw them away from the action. What begins with fleet-footed camp, with the Cavill-led cast absolutely reveling in the film’s gleeful (but never too excessive) violence, turns sluggish as it struggles to weave these simultaneous pincer moves together. The second act is especially sluggish, and when the pacing lags the undercooked nature of the film comes into sharper focus.

Through it all, Cavill is a treasure. As the leader of the band of ne’er-do-wells, he’s both the literal blueprint for Ian Fleming’s James Bond and the prototype for the original black ops squad. Roguish, cheeky, and never once in any sense of real danger, Cavill has an absolute blast with the material, elevating a rather one-dimensional character off the page with sheer willpower and inertial charm. It’s a shame that the interpersonal connection between the ensemble is so wickedly underwritten, leaving the viewer to fill in the blanks or make their own assumptions about what has occurred offscreen more often than not because Cavill’s turn here truly deserves more.

One major issue is that Ritchie and company almost entirely fail to create any stakes or risk, with these characters breezing through the onslaught of legions of Nazis without ever incurring the least bit of resistance. In Ritchie’s telling, the Nazis are an almost pitiable goon squad, incapable of putting up a whiff of a fight, effortlessly slaughtered. There’s a certain joyousness to Nazi slaughter, don’t get me wrong, but at exactly two hours, the lack of tension and glib killings quickly become repetitive and glossy.

Christopher Benstead’s jangling score immediately suggests the desperado days of the spaghetti western, but that actually seems like the wrong comparison. In many ways, Ministry’s palatable camp and tongue-in-cheek suavity are more closely akin to the Roger Moore era of 007. Glossy with the edges ironed out, though entertaining in a campy, self-aware way. No one accuses Moore’s tenure as Bond of being high art, though there’s value in its outlandish absurdity, and that’s exactly where Ritchie takes The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. With what we’ve come to expect from Ritchie, style over substance seems like more of a feature than a bug, and this is at least one of his better features from his most recent spell of subpar cinematic amusements. While the action sequences are executed with typical Ritchie flair, the overall experience is akin to a firework show—spectacular yet fleeting, with little left to ponder once the smoke clears.

CONCLUSION: Guy Ritchie’s ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ revels in its stylistic excess but skimps on depth. Henry Cavill’s charismatic lead performance enlivens the thinly sketched ensemble, yet the film’s lack of narrative stakes and character development leaves it stranded in shallow waters: sunk into mere spectacle rather than surfacing as the substantive spy thriller it aims to be.