The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare review: Guy Ritchie’s WWII spy heist is surprisingly watchable

Henry Cavill has been linked to the role of James Bond for so long now, the connection has outlasted the entire Daniel Craig cycle.

Before Craig was cast as the super spy for the 2006 reboot Casino Royale, Cavill was on the list of serious contenders but at a then-youthful 22 years old, he was too young.

So, it tracks that in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Cavill is playing Gus March-Phillipps, a British World War II commando who is said to be Ian Fleming’s real-life inspiration for the writer’s famous creation.

The movie is loosely based on Operation Postmaster, an ambitious mission to disrupt Nazi Germany’s U-boat fleet in the Atlantic. It was top secret stuff, under the command of Major General Sir Colin Gubbins, who was codenamed M. Fleming, who worked for Naval Intelligence during WWII, was a contemporary of both men.

For Cavill, it’s a full circle moment. Likely the closest he’ll ever get to playing Bond himself, even though he has more than dabbled in the secret agent space, in The Man from UNCLE and the recent caper Argylle. You could argue that his performance as Sherlock Holmes in the Enola Holmes movies is also adjacent.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare reunites Cavill with Guy Ritchie, who has tamped down the worst of his maximalist ticks to make his first decent film since The Man from UNCLE, which came out in 2015.

Adapted from the book Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII, Ritchie’s screen version is more of a slick heist movie than an action extravaganza. And it’s certainly not a sombre WWII drama.

Although, of course, lots of things go kaboom (Henry Golding plays a munitions expert so you have to give the man something to do), and bullets are wantonly sprayed across several scenes to the point of disbelief (so much gunfire, so few hit the main characters, otherwise known as plot armour).

It is still a Guy Ritchie joint, but the man behind Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake, has shown surprising restraint when it comes to whip-fast dialogue and his penchant for slow-motion. It’s also surprisingly straightforward, story-wise.

It’s 1941 and the British are being hammered by the Germans. Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear under heavy prosthetic make-up) is looking for a solution to the barrage of U-boat attacks in the Atlantic which is hampering both the safe passage of supplies and the Americans’ entry into the war in Europe.

This is where Gubbins/M (Cary Elwes) comes in. The spymaster needs to form a crew of commandoes game enough for a mission to sabotage the Axis Powers’ base on the Spanish island of Fernando Po, which resupplies the U-boats. Take it out and you stop the subs.

But there’s no room for decorum or the rules for warfare in such an operation, so M recruits of fierce warriors who have a tendency to go too far and ignore orders. The assembled are Gus (Cavill), Freddy Alvarez (Golding), Danish national Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) and Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin).

Under the neutral flag of a Swedish shipping boat, the team make their way down to Fernando Po, off the coast of west Africa. On a side mission is Marjorie Stewart (Eiza Gonzalez) and Heron (Babs Olusanmokun), who are using their wiles and connections on land.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is entertaining enough, especially if you like your history to be punctuated with loads of hand-to-hand combat scenes. Ritchson, best known for his role in Reacher, is a beast when it comes to stabbing and tearing through nameless Nazi extras.

While it’s nothing more than an amusing diversion and another celebration of outsiders who uses violence to solve their problems, this time dressed up in patriotic heroics, compared to Ritchie’s more recent, unwatchable output (Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, The Gentlemen), The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is practically a masterpiece.

Rating: 3/5

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is streaming on Prime Video from Thursday, July 25