The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024).....bases itself on Winston Churchill's de-classified files about his sending out clandestine rogue commandos on an impossible mission.....
..........and these guys, undisciplined, violent and probably criminally psychotic, were sent out to cut off supplies to the dreaded German U-boats. The fun part for us......these virtuosos of violence excel at racking up a sky-high Nazi body count.
(We all remember Nazis, right? The ones that Trump referred to as 'very good people'.....)
Leave it to Guy Ritichie, master of over-the-top, casually satiric carnage, to take the structure of a typical 'men-on-a-mission' World War 2 adventure (a la "Guns Of Navarone", "Where Eagles Dare") and bend it to his will.....which means turning it into a hip festival of brutal death for the most deserving villains on earth.
Led by coolest-would-be-Bond Henry Cavill, Churchill's motley fun loving crew of stone cold killers plow through hundreds of Nazis like a mobile buzzsaw.
You'd need a calculator to total up the endless companies of Germans who are machine gunned, blown up, neatly perforated with arrows, or stabbed repeatedly.......(a few lucky ones get off easier with quick, efficient throat slashings....)
Ritchie takes the bravura, spit-in-the-face-of-authority derring-do of "The Dirty Dozen" and dials it up to almost laughable cartoonish levels.
At one point, before the gang launches into eviscerating an entire Nazi prison camp, Cavill encourages his troupe to "try to have fun...."
And BQ doesn't mind admitting......we did.
Dumb and ridiculous as it is, we savored every blood soaked minute of it. We haven't enjoyed a World War 2 movie this much since watching Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton wipe out an entire castle-ful of Nazis in 'Where Eagles Dare'.
Apart from the non-stop massacres, there's other fun moments to savor....such as....
Cavill getting his marching orders from the very first British "M" (Cary Elwes), who's aided by a young Naval Intelligence officers named.....(as declares out loud "Fleming....Ian Fleming."
Yes, it's that Ian Fleming, whom the film's postscript informs us that he based his Jame Bond character on Cavill's real life "Gus March-Phillips?
We also did snicker a bit at Rory Kinnear's pathetic attempt at playing Winston Churchill.....(which we're unsure if it was intentional or not).....a toss-up as to what's more half-hearted - his acting or his make-up.
But a most definite MVP here - composer Christoper Bernstead, whose score makes a riotous counterpoint to Ritchie's visuals.......either it's brazenly imitating an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western score or pounding away with 'Mad Max' frenzy.
This all sounds like junk, you say?
Sure as shootin', but this is the kind of exuberant junk that you can revel in, lose yourself in, and enjoy the hell out of while you gobble down tons of buttered popcorn.
And serves to prove one of BQ's carved-in-stone commandments of cinema.......that you can never have enough movies that mow down mass quantities of Nazis.
4 stars (****).
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