Guy Ritchie’s Ungentlemanly Warfare Is a Disappointment
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is Guy Ritchie’s British twist on the old World War II “man on a mission” flicks. But despite being loosely based on a true story, it plays more like a cartoon.
Henry Cavill in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. (Lionsgate Films)
I’d just rediscovered how much I enjoy action films with Monkey Man. And then I had to go and ruin it with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
It’s another one of those Guy Ritchie flicks, this one about a team of kill-crazy types who are regarded as so dangerous and disposable that they get sent on a secret suicide mission during World War II. It’s sort of a farcical British variation on The Dirty Dozen (1967), except that it’s boring as hell because you can’t identify with any of the disposable killers, who never seem to be in any real danger.
They’re led by a cheerful blank-eyed sociopath named Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill) who has a fulsome beard and mustache and laughs like this: HAH HAH HAH HAH!
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