There’s a scene midway through Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds that, if you’re reading this, you probably already know: the Basterds, while sitting in a Nazi tavern, attempt to fool those same Nazis into thinking they’re one of them. The scene only lasts under 20 minutes, but every second is packed with so much tension that you constantly feel like you’re just a syllable away from destruction. Basterds continuously knocks it out of the park with scenes like this one, meaning that every movie in the “Nazis Getting Killed” genre now has to live up to the expectations created by this Tarantino classic.
If you’re going into The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare expecting be treated to a gritty, fast-paced and quip-smart version of Basterds, guess again. Guy Ritchie’s own entry into the genre is, instead, closer to what might have happened if the director of an Old Spice commercial tried his hand at directing a Tarantino film. Made by the director of everything from Snatch to Sherlock Holmes to The Man From U.N.C.L.E., even at their worst and most boring, Ritchie’s films always have an entertaining spark to them. Unfortunately, The Ministry doesn’t have time for spark. It doesn’t even have the decency to take an objectively historical event—Operation Postmaster, in which covert and unsanctioned British forces stole Nazi and Italian ships from under their noses—and give it the electrifying, big-budget action film treatment it deserves. Seriously, how do you fuck that up?
For starters, the film rests on the expectation that since this is a historic event in which a lot of Nazis were killed and deceived, this will be an exciting premise all on its own. While it’s true you don’t even really need much of a plot to be entertaining—last year’s Nazi bloodbath Sisu was wafer-thin with a silent protagonist, but it felt like it was crafted by people who understood the importance of making a film that has a strong personality and high stakes—this is where The Ministry truly fails hardest. You know that feeling you get when watching a historical drama, knowing you could shatter the suspense and tension just by simply going on a Wikipedia deep-dive? The entire band of heroes in The Ministry carry themselves like they’ve done exactly that, pumping unspectacular round after unspectacular round into the chests and heads of unsuspecting Nazis with the unearned confidence of a teenager playing a video game with an invincibility cheat enabled. There’s no stakes in The Ministry. There’s no human drama. You’ve never seen a group of covert military operatives in less pulse-pounding situations.
This could be forgiven if the film gave us characters that you actually enjoyed watching, but The Ministry phones in its character development badly enough that sometimes it feels like you missed the first 20 minutes of the film. Even in the diciest conflicts, so little blood is shed that you’re left wondering why Ritchie chose to abandon everything he’s learned about depicting violence in film. His older films, like Snatch or Sherlock Holmes, forced you to remember that everyone is made of flesh, blood and bone which could be gruesomely exposed at any minute. By contrast, the violence in The Ministry feels as disconnected as ordering pizza through an app. Its characters invade Nazi-riddled spaces by casually strolling around, silently pumping Nazis with bullets that cause them to simply keel over. Blood is spilled but rarely seen. Nobody gets killed very creatively or gruesomely, which is one of the hallmarks of retribution-focused cinema. Even when things go awry, our heroes never falter in their decisions to change course, and as a result, the worst that you’ll see happen is a shot to the shoulder—cinema’s most survivable gunshot wound.
The Ministry looks like a modern Ritchie film (or, at least, it looks like the similarly colorful but forgettable Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre), but unlike the best of his ensemble action movies, you’ll find yourself permanently unable to recall very much about anyone—with the exception of Rory Kinnear’s portrayal of Winston Churchill, and not in a good way. You, the person reading this review, could probably do a more serviceable impression of Churchill right this moment, than Kinnear got paid good money to do. Nobody else in the so-called Ministry, all working together to sabotage the fascists crawling around Fernando Po, is much better either; the worst of them is Henry Cavill’s Gus March-Phillips, who delivers every line with the smugness of internet edgelords who idolize Rick Sanchez and Sterling Archer. The rest of the cast includes fellow operatives Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) and central baddie Heinrich Luhr (played by Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz himself, Til Schweiger), whose every threatening action and menacing line feels robbed of any power by how little the film cares about making us feel real, actual tension.
You can’t blame Ritchie for wanting to make this movie, but you may be left asking yourself, “But did he really want to make it?” The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is Ritchie coasting harder than you’ve ever seen, resting on the bankability of a cast of hot, buff actors mowing down the most objectively godawful villains the real-world has to offer, all while smoking cigars and seeming very charming and roguish. The film revels in its violence, but not enough to make you enjoy watching it. It loves the historical events that inspired it, but not enough for you to want to learn more about the people who actually did the things depicted. In fact, that’s the most impressive thing Ritchie gives us: in a movie where we watch people steal a bunch of Nazi boats and fuck up their military base on the way out, the film doesn’t even make you want to read a slew of Wikipedia articles on the bus ride home from the theater.
Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
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