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Most World War II films aren’t comedies. They are usually thrilling war dramas like “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Saving Private Ryan,” or deep meditations on the Holocaust like “The Zone of Interest” and “The Pianist.”

But, evidently, no one told director Guy Ritchie what war dramas are supposed to look like.

Ritchie, the writer and director behind “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” crafts a heavily fictionalized account of Operation Postmaster, the secret campaign involving British agents stealing Italian and Nazi ships from an island off the coast of West Africa. While the real-life operation was gravely serious, Ritchie makes a dumb fun action romp out of the mission. It’s partially meant as an insult, but more so as a statement of fact.

The film doesn’t have anything particularly profound to say about the conflict and has uninteresting characters. But Ritchie isn’t entirely focused on the conflict itself, instead leaning into the frivolity about how Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) assembles Britain’s Avengers.

Although Ritchie has veered into making more serious films like “Wrath of Man” and “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” his roots remain in the action-comedy genre. Like in crime-comedy classics “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels,” Ritchie prefers to put his fascinating protagonists, who are chock full of quips, into action-packed squeezes.

Operation Postmaster offers Ritchie the chance to lean into this dynamic. Brigadier Colin Gubbins (Cary Elwes) initiates the off-the-books black-ops mission and enlists Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) to assemble a team of renegades. Gus and his operatives try to avoid capture and death by the Nazis, while also dodging capture by his own British government due to the mission’s illegal nature.

While in this particular pinch, Gus isn’t short of jokes. Cavill plays the film’s hero with the same suave humor he delivered in Ritchie’s 2015 film, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” His quips take the form of a polite British gentleman, perfectly contrasted with very ungentlemanly actions, like brutally murdering Nazis. Cavill taps into this well often, which feels stale at times, but the jokes mostly land.

Cavill’s fellow performers also rely on this contrast of suave and violent – with the exception of Alan Ritchson, known for his leading role in the Amazon Prime show “Reacher.” In “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” Ritchson plays the Danish grizzly bear Anders Lassen, who is proficient with a bow and arrow and can make murdering Italian and German soldiers hilarious.

With these adequate performances from both Cavill and Ritchson, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” reaches its ultimate form by the second act; it becomes a story about soldiers killing Nazis with machine guns and explosives. When Gus and his team break a comrade (Alex Pettyfer) out of a Gestapo prison, they find creative ways to kill the nameless enemies while still making jokes.

The film becomes awfully similar to Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 classic, “Inglourious Basterds,” which features a similar premise where a team of Jewish American soldiers brutally bring down the Third Reich with a third-act crescendo resulting in German defeat.

But while Tarantino’s film touches on the relationship between cinema and its ability to both lift up and literally and figuratively burn down a hateful ideology, Ritchie’s film features no such depth or introspection.

There is a subplot present in the film where two other British agents — Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) and Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) — go undercover and try to distract and befriend the SS commander of the island Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger). Marjorie’s motivations in bringing down the Nazis are from her Jewish heritage, but the film spends little time on her background or the cruelty of Luhr. Instead, Ritchie focuses on the heist of the German ships.

Ritchie, for all of his British bluster and bravado, makes his own version of Tarantino movies without the depth and complexity of Tarantino’s works. He focuses more on the spectacle of the noble Brits who defied the Axis Powers and their own Parliament for the greater good of defeating the ultimate evil.

Ritchie makes no illusions about this in the film’s comedic tone and focus on action sequences. So, you shouldn’t come into “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” with grand expectations. Instead, take it for what it actually is: background noise that you have on when you are doing something else.

Published on April 22, 2024 at 9:06 pm

Contact Henry: henrywobrien1123@gmail.com