Director Guy Ritchie and actor Henry Cavill have had their share of ups and downs. Each has fans and detractors.
With The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, the director and star basically share an upswing.
The story, a spy tale set in World War II, isn't especially innovative. A team of misfits is sent on an impossible assignment? The Dirty Dozen in 1967 covered similar territory.
Still, how you carry out such basic ideas matters a lot. We all know how World War II ended and Germany didn't win it. The trick is to show the audience that an Allied victory wasn't a sure thing.
This movie should not be taken as a history lesson. Still, German submarines were a major complication in the Allied war effort. So The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare uses that as the start of its plot.
Cavill is the leader of the effort to sabotage a key facility supplying the German submarines. Essentially, he's an English version of Lee Marin in The Dirty Dozen. The British Cavill's group faces peril from both the Nazis and the British Navy because this isn't an authorized mission.
As the story unfolds, numerous complications have to be overcome. Ritchie (also one of the screenwriters) paces such complications well.
Besides Cavill, the rest of the cast has plenty to do. Rory Kinnear, who played Tanner in the Daniel Craig 007 films, portrays Winston Churchill. Ian Fleming is a secondary character played by Freddie Fox.
The movie definitely is violent. There is death via pistols, rifles, machine guns, arrows, and other sources of mayhem. If violence isn't your thing, you may want to give this a pass.
Still, the movie is tight, with a running time of two hours (despite the usual long end titles). In recent years, many movies have gone well beyond that mark. GRADE: B-Plus
No comments:
Post a Comment