Guy Ritchie Makes A James Bond Movie In 'The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare'
#269: "The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare," "Shogun," "Hercules," "Shot Caller"
Edition 269:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: One of my favorite directors, Guy Ritchie, has a new movie out. Then we gotta talk about the series finale of Shogun, and this week’s streaming recs couldn’t be any more different from each other. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Zoe Kravitz is directing (!!) Channing Tatum (!!) in a murder mystery (??).
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
The most obvious comparison point for Guy Ritchie’s new foul-mouthed World War II ensemble action movie was always going to be Inglorius Basterds, and to be fair, the bard of British gangster tales shares a similar flair to fellow director Quentin Tarantino. We as viewers come to each of their movies for a kind of supercharged version of reality, where punches and insults are delivered with a wink and a smirk.
But after seeing the movie it’s much closer in tone and execution to a James Bond flick, dropping us in a world of international espionage spliced between people in suits barking orders from smokey, wood-paneled back rooms while more attractive people, also in suits, punch and quip their way to saving the world.
That comparison is actually appropriate here, since Ian Fleming (the real-life author of the James Bond novels) is an actual character in the movie as a British intelligence officer, and we’re told in a post-credits note that the real life version of the Henry Cavill’s character in this movie was one of Fleming’s primary inspirations for the character.
That coincidence seems a little too convenient, as is the branding as “the real life story of the first special forces mission.” Yes, this plot is more rooted to reality than some of Ritchie’s other works, but only barely.
Cavill’s character is basically if Bond had a twirly mustache and was a savage who stuck his tongue out while killin’ Nazis. He’s got a crew of supersoldier friends, including Henry Golding (becoming a Ritchie regular) and one played by Alan Richardson who is, I kid you know, the most muscle-bound person I’ve ever seen in a movie (all respect to The Rock or what Zac Efron did for The Iron Claw…Richardson would snap them like a twig). If we’re going with the Bond theme, that makes Eiza Gonzalez the Bond girl, a part she turns into a jaw-dropper both with her beauty and her capability.
This crew are basically superheroes, so even though their given a near-impossible task of crippling the German U-boat operation — enabling the United States to join the war — there’s very little worry that they’ll be able to pull it off. In fact, much of the actual action scenes, which are shot at night and therefore difficult to follow, don’t hold a viewer’s attention as much as the spycraft, which extends from Dune’s Babs Olusanmokun in Africa all the way back to Cary Elwes (as the familiar Bond role of “M”) and Rory Kinnear (who has played “M” in Bond movies, but here plays Winston Churchill).
I guess what I’m saying is…this is a perfectly fine movie that only made me think one thing…when are we going to let Ritchie make a James Bond movie?!?
Ritchie has put together a pretty fascinating career, bursting into Hollywood like a bare-knuckled uppercut in the late 90s and early 2000s with his incredibly specific Cockney gangster movies (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch). He had a point of view and a style that was entirely his own, not unlike Tarantino, yet lacked some of the latter’s restraint. After a few projects failed, he gave up his auteur ambitions to become a big studio director for hire, which outside of a very good Sherlock Holmes movie gave us a run of pretty mediocre IP crap — a Sherlock Holmes sequel, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. remake, a King Arthur retelling, and most egregiously, the Aladdin live action movie.
Now I’m sure he was laughing all the way to the bank, and who am I to tell him he should turn down millions, but all I know is sometimes it can be hard to watch Michael Jordan play baseball for too long.
This man needed to get back to what he does best. It’s British dudes with thick accents bantering; it’s being the absolute best namer of characters in movie history (Bullet Tooth Tony, Mumbles, Franky Four Fingers…the list is endless); it’s convoluted plots with multiple factions all vying for some prize; it’s heists and double crosses and shoot-em-ups. He did it with The Gentlemen, sneakily one of my favorite movies of the 2010s, he did it on a smaller scale with the underrated Wrath of Man, he did it with this year’s adaptation of “The Gentlemen” into a series for Netflix, and he’s doing it again with The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
The Guy Ritchie Starter Pack:
Snatch
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
The Gentlemen
Sherlock Holmes
Something New
Shogun (finale): In today’s TV environment viewers (myself included) are conditioned to expect a grand finale. But this show went with more of a coda than a climax. There was no big battle scene or epic showdown, it was more like “alright class what did we learn.” Initially I was pretty disappointed, because the machinations of all the political angling didn’t all coalesce into winners and losers, necessarily. But I think in my mind and others it will age really well, because it’s forced me to recontextualize everything else that came before. And what came before was easily the best TV season of the year so far (and it seems unlikely it will be dethroned).
If you’re someone who waits until a show ends to see if it sticks the landing, so you know whether it’s worth jumping in (I’ve been this person before), here’s me giving this show one final giant recommendation. Impeccably acted, scripted and realized, I feel like I just spent 10 hours in feudal Japan. I know it was a mini-series but I’d gladly spend 10 more there if given the chance.
Something Old
Hercules (1997, Disney+): What is the best “classic” (pre-2000) Disney animated movie? One is never too old to have this conversation. After some deep thought I settled on this musical take on Greek mythology because from memory I could still recite funny lines, song lyrics and see the characters in my head, having not seen the movie in 20+ years. I can go the distance! I won’t say I’m in love! Absolute bangers.
After revisiting it this week, I realize just how good of a choice I made. It’s a masterpiece of children’s programming, not patronizing young viewers but not trying to trojan horse in an adult movie for kids either (Pixar, I see you and I love you). The humor is far more clever than it needs to be, and the story is lean and tight at just 96 minutes. Plus, I challenge anyone to find a more perfect voice cast. Danny DeVito as the trainer Phil, James Woods as Hades, Rip Torn as Zeus…their line deliveries elevate every single scene by 20%. I know there’s a lot of great classic Disney animated movies out there, and I like a lot of them, but this has to take the cake.
Something to Stream
Shot Caller (Netflix): This hyper-masculine prison movie had been on my radar for a long time, but I convinced myself I was never quite in the right mood for the story about an innocent stock broker who gets imprisoned and ends up embracing a new identity as a ganged-up badass. It seemed like a cheap albeit entertaining B-movie.
The thing I was not prepared for was just how fully realized this world of cops and robbers is. A viewer really feels like he or she is in that prison, in that gang on the outside, in that police station, understanding those cultures. The characters feel like real people, and the movie achieves that rare immersion where you’re thinking about decisions being made inside the story rather than behind the camera. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of “Game of Thrones” fame stars in a restrained yet unbelievably good performance, flanked by Jon Bernthal, Lake Bell, Holt McCallany and a handful of other recognizable faces that ensure quality up and down the board.
Without spoiling anything, I can promise you won’t predict what direction this plot is going to go, and if you can handle more than a little violence, you’ll be rewarded by one of the better streamers I’ve seen in a good long time.
Trailer Watch: Joker: Blink Twice
A directorial debut for Zoe Kravitz! Starring Channing Tatum?? Didn’t have that on my 2024 bingo card. This looks like an ensemble mystery thriller about a cast of young people who go on a whirlwind vacation to a billionaire’s private island, and if that sounds a bit…Epstein-y…well, that doesn’t seem too far off. Tatum is such a teddy bear I like seeing him with a sinister side, and the movie looks like it has style to go with a social message that could resonate. If this movie is as cool as Kravitz is, we’re all in for a treat.