Five Things About The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

I wrote my previous post about The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) based entirely on the trailer. Since the film has been released on Prime Video, I decided to sit down and actually give it a good watch with an eye towards writing a more involved and in-depth review. Unfortunately, I think I really said all I had to say about the costumes from the preview post, but luckily for my word quota, I have a lot more thoughts in general about the film itself.

1. This is a Guy Ritchie film

Is this a warning? Maybe. Guy Ritchie is, first and foremost, a filmmaker who caters to A Certain Audience. His films tend to be very masculine, but also irreverently poking fun at masculine tropes. I happen to adore Guy Ritchie films in general because I naturally gravitate towards anything that takes the piss out of whatever it’s supposed to be valorizing. But if you’re looking for a serious treatment of the subject matter, you’re probably better off watching SAS: Rogue Heroes (2022-24), which covers similar territory a bit more reverently (also, it’s very good, and I do recommend watching it if you’re into historical spy stuff).

2. Beautiful Brits

Ten minutes into the film, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “Did they seriously just round up every beautiful man in the UK to be in this flick?” Because, dude. It’s thirst trap central.

3. Historical Accuracy?

Be it known that Ritchie doesn’t let historical accuracy get in the way of good fun. If there’s a way to make his characters into super-humans, he will absolutely find it and exploit it. He will cut corners on historical accuracy for the sake of, in this case, beating the shit out of Nazis. And who doesn’t love watching gorgeous people beating the shit out of Nazis? Nazis, probably. But they can fuck off.

4. Historical Accuracy.

Believe it or not, this film was actually based on historical fact. The basis of the plot revolves around a team of arguably sociopathic British special operatives trying to blow up an Italian ship bringing supplies to Nazi Germany while docked in the Nazi-infested Spanish island of Fernando Po off the coast of West Africa. This is actually something that happened in real life. Operation Postmaster was conceived by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) headed by Brigadier Colin Gubbins (played by Cary Elwes in the film), executed under the direction of Prime Minister Winston Churchill (played by Rory Kinnear), and assisted by Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox).

The story goes that Fleming eventually created the entire concept of James Bond by drawing on the people he worked with during Operation Postmaster. Gubbins is even referred to as “M” in the film. Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill), Anders Lassen (Alan Richson), Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettifer), and Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) are all actual real people who actually did real cool special operations stuff in Operation Postmaster. There are some characters that are evidently based on real people, but names are slightly different for whatever reason, such as Henry Hayes (played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin) being based on a real person named Geoffrey Hayes. Even beyond that, however, there’s A LOT of liberty taken with the source material.

And I was bummed to find out that Heron, played by the preternaturally watchable Babs Olusanmokun, was basically invented for the film. Also, I thought Heron had way better chemistry with Marjorie than with Gus in the film, but Gus and Marjorie were married for a hot minute in real life before Gus died doing some other brave shit later in the war.

5. The costumes

The costumes were designed by Loulou Bontemps, who I think nailed the overall vibe of a Guy Ritchie World War II Film.

Unsurprisingly, Marjorie’s outfits are probably the most interesting, out of a sea of suits and uniforms. 

Have you seen The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)? What did you think?

 
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