The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: A Review (Review #1830)

THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE

How to appeal to the young kids to learn about such things as sacrifice, courage, fighting a monstrous evil. The answer is simplicity itself: turn everything into a joke. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare took a true story and turned it into something so outlandish and cartoonish that it makes one doubt that it is remotely based on a true story. Even that could be forgiven if it were fun and exciting. Instead, director/co-writer Guy Ritchie's answer to Inglourious Basterds is all style, not substance.

In 1942 the Second World War looks on the verge of ending with a British defeat. Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) decides that extraordinary methods must be used against a ruthless enemy. The Nazis are not playing by the rules, so the British should not either. With that, Brigadier Gubbins also known as "M" (Cary Elwes) is tasked to recruit a team for an unauthorized mission. This team must destroy the support system for German U-boats which are chocking off British supplies. The problem is that the U-boat cache is on a remote Spanish island off the African coast. With Spain officially neutral, an open British raid risks dragging the fascist Spanish government into the war. As such, Operation Postmaster must be completely hush-hush.

"M", with help from his aid Ian Fleming (Freddy Fox), finds Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill), whose unorthodox and dangerous methods are not to the government's liking but whose unorthodox and dangerous methods are what Operation Postmaster needs. He insists on recruiting his own team, an international and Academy Award-qualifying multicultural cast of figures to take on this mission. There's Irishman Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), Swede Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), and Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding). Helping him also are American actress Marjorie Stewart (Eliza Gonzalez) and their man on the island of Fernando Po, Richard Heron (Babs Olusanmokun). 

Gus also insists on rescuing his BFF, Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) from a Nazi prison, requiring a side mission. Finally arriving on Fernando Po, the groups perform their tasks, with Marjorie set out to seduce and distract Nazi Heinrich Luhr (Til Schwieger), the Nazi head at Fernando Po. With the various pieces put together, this Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare sets to work on their most dangerous mission. Will they succeed? Will they all make it out alive?

If you are physically capable of staying awake to find those answers, you are made of stronger stuff than I am. I have not read Damien Lewis' Churchill's Secret Warriors, the nonfiction book on which The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was very loosely based on. I figure that the true-life story is a fascinating and exciting one to attempt a film version. 

However, I cannot think of a few films as boring as The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. The problem is in how Ritchie as both director and cowriter, took this story and decided to make everything deadpan. Perhaps by now I should not be astonished that there are four credited screenwriters in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. However, I am still astonished that four people managed to take a true-life war story and turn it into a thoroughly fictional project.

The problem is a simple one but one that doomed The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: the tone. The film is so deadpan and stylized that it looks artificial. Everyone acts in such a nonchalant manner that it makes both the action and the comedy look fake. It is one thing to have someone make a quip at what is meant to be a tense or exciting scene. It is another when your film is almost nothing but quips. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare simply tries too hard to be breezy and fun, which has the opposite result. 

Take the Appleyard rescue. Leaving aside how we got a recap of information that we already received, everyone in the rescue is directed to be so deadpan in their delivery that it comes across almost as spoof. I get that the filmmakers were trying to make everything look breezy, fun and almost a lark. However, they went overboard in their endeavors. Anders has shot a group of Nazis with his bow and arrows. Gus, Hayes and Freddy all see the Nazis fall to their deaths and they register no reaction, apart from perhaps a wry bemusement. It is as if they are so removed from things that it is of no consequence what actually happens.

The whole cast is trying so hard, so very hard, to be so cool and blase that it looks fake. It tells the audience, "None of this is real". If it is not real, why should we care what happens to these people? 

During the Appleyard rescue, Christopher Benstead's jazz score, while enjoyable, underscores the falseness of it all. There are no stakes, no potential for moments of genuine tension or suspense. It is all very remote, very separated, very off-putting. 

It ends up looking forced, mannered and worse of all, dull.

I struggled mightily to stay awake through it. I wrote in my notes how I was both fighting and desperate to stay awake. I would not be surprised if some of the actors struggled to stay awake during filming. My disdain for Henry Cavill is well-known and, in some corners, openly mocked. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare does not suggest that Cavill is an actor. It manages to remove the idea that he is even an action star. To be fair, Cavill is asked to be deadpan, which is at about his level of acting skills, so he is not too bad. However, Cavill's character is all raised eyebrows and "old boy" this and "old girl" that. Elwes genuinely made me wonder whether he was deliberately hamming it up with the British aplomb manner. 

Everyone in the cast appears to treat everything as a joke, one where they can be so "veddy proper" that it is not fun or funny. Playing into the stereotype of the forever unbothered British sucks the life out of things. Ritchson, this mountain of a man, attempts what I think is a Swedish accent. I doubt anyone would mistake him for Ingrid Bergman's brother. 

There is a stubborn remoteness to everything in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. The action scenes, culminating in what is meant to be a massive series of explosions, looks so distant and dull. The shocking discovery that Luhr makes about Stewart's heritage when she inadvertently uses Yiddish while singing Mack the Knife is not tense. That she gets out of it rather easily and quickly undercuts even the pretense of tension.  

Yes, I suppose the entire sequence is pretty. It is also pretty dull.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a waste. Boring, trying too hard to be fun and breezy, it might have been better to have stuck to a more realistic adaptation than this stab at war hijinks. 

DECISION: F