Ungentlemanly warfare, and presentation too

Parbina Rashid

Ian Fleming, who was part of Winston Churchill’s top-secret espionage operation during World War II, created James Bond and modelled him after Gus March-Phillipps, the man who led Operation Postmaster in 1942 against the Third Reich.

In 2024, Guy Ritchie recreates Phillipps (Henry Cavill), modelling him after Bond to serve us his version of Operation Postmaster in ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’. And to keep the 007 flavour intact, he even refers to a key character, Brigadier Gubbins (Cary Elwes), who handles the rogue leader, as ‘M’.

Ungentlemanly? No! Unbecoming? Yes! — Ritchie’s respect for history and his viewer’s intellect, that is.

Adapted by four screenwriters from the book ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: How Churchill’s Secret Warriors Set Europe Ablaze and Gave Birth to Modern Black Ops’ by Damien Lewis, the plot revolves around a top-secret mission initiated by Churchill (Rory Kinnear), Gubbins and Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox) to sabotage a Nazi U-boat base on the island of Fernardo Po (now Bioko).

Phillipps is given a free hand to create his team along with a brief — “You were not chosen for your conspicuous morals or high ideals. You were chosen because you are the last resort.” He takes it seriously and as the team starts building, the body count starts mounting.

The core team of Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding), Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), the strategist Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) and Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson) gets the support of actress Marjorie Stewart (Eiza Gonzalez) and Heron (Babs Olusanmokun), Fernando Po’s premier club owner.

And by the time these “ruthless men who will not hesitate to stoop beneath the conventions of war” go on a rampage without much resistance from the Nazis, the tried and tested villains of Hollywood, we lose the body count as well as interest.

But nobody can accuse Ritchie and his writers of biases. If the Nazi soldiers are more of cardboard cut-outs, so are the heroes. Not enough thought or time has been spared to give them a proper character arc. They are just killing machines who are on the right side of history.

Phillipps’ charisma hinges on the fact that he refuses to take orders. He does the talking with his gun. The only memorable dialogues he mouths is, “That wasn’t supposed to happen yet,” when a blast wasn’t supposed to happen at a particular time.

Others too suffer the same treatment. Lassen, the angry Dane, likes to stab Nazis as well as shoot them with a bow and arrow and then an axe. Then comes Appleyard, who is the strategist of the whole op. He gets monosyllabic dialogues to explain his battle plans. Only Marjorie (Eiza Gonzalez), an actress of Jewish descent whose family was killed by the Nazis, has a slightly developed character that has glamour oozing out. Her job is to seduce a senior Nazi officer (Til Schweiger) as the boys go about doing their things.

Ritchie certainly believes that action speaks louder than words, so he enriches the screenplay with action, action and more action. As, in one of the scenes, an Eton-educated warlord, who happens to be a prince and aspires to be a knight, offers his men and arms to Phillipps against his fight against the Germans “not because they’re Nazis, but because they’re gauche”.

Stylishly shot by Ed Wild, in editor Ed Herbert’s hands, the action scenes become more like a video game. And it evokes precisely the same emotions a video game would.

Watch it not in the historical context (for that there are documentaries like ‘World War II in Colour’ and ‘Battle of the Atlantic’), or even as the genesis of James Bond. Watch it for those good-looking hunks who make killing look effortless, and even fun!