It’s tough to have the movie everyone will compare you to be Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece ‘Inglorious Basterds’, very possibly Tarantino’s best film, and one that continues to live on in the zeitgeist today. But it’s the fate of Guy Ritchie’s latest picture ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’, based on the real life actions of Major Gus March-Phillipps (Henry Cavill) and his band of merry men.

Ritchie loves a heist, and as with any great heist the construction of the team is an important part of the fun along the way. Unfortunately this team comes largely prebuilt, having been constructed before we bring anyone into frame. It’s a shame because the actors are all strong performers, so something akin to Soderbergh’s ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ would’ve been welcome. But alas we meet the team as a team, with Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding), already on a Swedish fishing boat on their way to break Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) out of a Nazi war camp, before sailing to Fernando Po, an island off of Africa that the ultimate Nazi U-Boat is kept and sinking said boat. Prior to this via flashback the team receives their orders from a criminally underused Cary Elwes, portraying Brigadier Gubbins, and was told their contacts on the island would be Marjorie Stewaret (Eiza Gonazalez), and Mister Heron (Babs Olusanmokun).

There’s a non zero amount of Bond baked into the script, with Ian Fleming showing up as a briefly named character. The personage of Major March-Phillips was supposedly the basis for 007 himself so it makes sense the film would want to pay homage to that, and honestly it’s brief enough that it doesn’t feel like a terribly sweaty tip of the hat. Alongside the Inglorious Basterds, and Mr. Bond, the other media that greets us is a dash of Wolfenstein. The campy nature of the violence makes it easy to feel light and airy, and the sets put together in a way that often feel like our main characters are video game characters, never feeling like they’ll ever be in any real danger, stomping through levels and doors, taking on a base of hundreds with a team of five.

While that makes it difficult to create tension, the movie’s goal is like most Ritchie films. Have English lads commit acts of violence while robbing people and making jokes about it. And Ministry has that in spades for sure. Cavill and the gang are certainly charming and self assured, casually disobeying British commands to stop their mission while killing countless numbers of Nazis on the way. Also it’s realized towards the end that they cannot simply sink the U-Boat, so they will of course have to steal it. Ritchie loves a heist after all.

The most interesting performance comes from Eiza Gonzalez and her banter with the main villain of the film, the Nazi in charge of Fernando Po, Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger). Her character Marjori, is Jewish and undercover as a gold merchant from New York. Heinrich is a cunningly evil man, corrupt even for Nazi standards and every time he interacts with her it feels like he’s trying to suss out if she is who she says she is. These interactions would fit perfectly into a Bond film, and the two have that odd chemistry that we’ve come to associate with 007 films. You’re never on the Nazi’s side, but you want to hear him talk to our heroes to see just how depraved he really is.

‘Ministry’ probably lands somewhere in the middle for me in terms of Ritchie’s filmography. It’s odd how tame the movie’s violence is even though it bears an R rating. I imagine that’s to avoid the ‘Inglorious Basterds’ comparison but it’s there all the same. His early works like ‘Snatch’ and ‘Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ are a little pulpier. And I enjoyed his Sherlock Holmes movies more than many folks I know. ‘Ministry’ is however a breath of fresh air when compared to Ritchie’s ‘Aladdin’ remake, so hopefully he can keep the trend going and make a heist movie that will finally steal my heart completely.

3/5