Guy Ritiche assembled a dirty dozen action movie homages to staff up The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare

It’s said that time heals all wounds, but there are some wounds that cinema can’t help picking at, and the Second World War is one of the biggest. And who can blame Hollywood when each passing year brings the declassification of that conflict’s most clandestine and outrageous activities and unorthodox operations? World War II has long been a rich source of inspirational and heroic stories of courage, determination, and even low cunning, but we’ve never seen anything like The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare before.

With the Atlantic under siege from the German Navy’s formidable U-boats, the outlook for 1942 Great Britain looks grim. As senior figures in the War Office consider appeasement, Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) turns to Brigadier Colin Gubbins (Cary Elwes), who has a daring plan. He proposes an off-the-books black-ops sabotage mission aimed at disrupting the Nazis’ U-boat resupply operation on the Spanish-controlled island Fernando Po. Tapping Major Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill) to lead the raiding force, March-Phillipps assembles a crew of renegades and reprobates, setting out to save the war effort.

If it wasn’t already quite obvious, the presence of Ian Fleming (Freddy Fox) as adjutant to Brigadier Gubbins, confirms beyond a doubt that as we watch the fictionalised events of Operation Postmaster we’re actually watching the genesis of the character of James Bond. But while co-writer/ director Guy Ritchie is happy to explore the inspiration for that action icon in the background, he’s got a very different franchise in his sights as his template: Mission: Impossible. The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare follows Ethan Hunt’s usual M.O. as March-Phillips assembles his team, a team which includes Alan Ritchson as Anders Lassen, Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Henry Hayes, and Henry Golding as Freddy Alvarez, with Eiza González’s Marjorie Stewart and Babs Olusanmokun as Heron, the team’s contacts on the ground. There’s even a side-quest to pick up a much-needed member of the team who’s been captured, Alex Pettyfer’s Geoffrey Appleyard.

Despite the stakes and the real-life source material, The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare suffers from a lightness of touch that borders on flippancy. It’s an attitude that sits awkwardly alongside the brutal and bloody violence, albeit it’s mostly Nazis that are being summarily disposed of with extreme prejudice so it’s hard to feel too upset about it. Still, there’s something a little bit disquieting about a true story being this bombastically brought to life (I’m sure the presence of producer Jerry Bruckheimer is just a coincidence) and, it has to be said, we get very little insight into the people themselves as they’re allocated their pre-defined ensemble action movie archetypes.

It is nice to see Cavill relax and enjoy himself for once, in a role that doesn’t demand brooding intensity one hundred and ten percent of the time. Likewise, Alan Ritchson has fun with his psychotic Scandinavian role and while everyone gets a moment to shine during the action-heist caper, it does feel at times like a team with one too many members for the story being told. The antagonists are fairly two-dimensional, too, with Til Schweiger’s Heinrich Luhr coming off as a half-hearted attempt to combine Inglourious Basterds‘ Hans Landa and Raiders Of The Lost Ark‘s SS-Sturmbannführer Toht while the Italian characters are generally written off as buffoons and the less said about Rory Kinnear’s shockingly bad Winston Churchill the better.

The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare could probably have done with a little more originality and a little less lifting from the likes of Kingsman: The Secret Service and Raiders Of The Lost Ark to name but two, but generally manages to get by on style over substance and the likeability of its charismatic cast and some great set-pieces. It’s an entertaining if shallow look at a lesser-known chapter of World War II history told with a smirking high-energy approach which stops just short of being glib, although the sequel baiting final scene might just push it over that line.