From Guy Ritchie, the master of ungentlemanly filmmaking, comes The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a heartwarming tale about a band of friends bound together through an unshakeable bond: a shared compulsion to kill Nazis. Based loosely (just ever so loosely) on a “true” story (we cannot stress just how loosely this movie was based on actual events), the movie follows Superman, Jack Reacher, and friends as they set out to cripple Nazi U-boat operations in the north Atlantic to give England the breathing room it needs to fight back against Hitler’s advancing cronies the best way one can: by organizing a heist. Just a great, big, old Nazi-killing heist. As with any great heist, nothing goes to plan, until it does, then it doesn’t, but then it does, and a lot of Nazis die in the end, which if we’re being honest, is probably the best way for any heist to end. So join us as we travel back in time to World War II (not literally, of course – that’s impossible as far as you know) to explore Guy Ritchie’s latest movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare to see if this is a return to form and the trusted Ritchie formula for on-screen hijinks. And if not, just through sheer law of averages, one of the fifteen movies he’s releasing this year is bound to be to your liking.
* Spoilers for this movie are contained within – audio warning contained in episode. *
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)
directed by: Guy Ritchie
starring: Henry Cavill – Eiza González – Alan Ritchson – Henry Golding
genres: action – war – drama
runtime: 120 min
Transcript (via Apple)
*not 100% accurate
Hi there, welcome back to The Reel Film Chronicles podcast.
As always, I’m Nathan.
And I’m Brian.
And in this week’s very special episode, we’re going to be taking a look at a little film called The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Yeah, Guy Ritchie’s latest film, Guy Ritchie, man, I feel like this guy’s been blasting films out, like one or two a year for the past few years, like way quicker than his early career.
And I don’t know.
Definitely.
I don’t know, would you classify yourself as like, you know, a fan boy of Guy Ritchie films?
I would say, yeah, I’m a fan of Guy Ritchie.
I thoroughly enjoy, especially his early stuff.
It got me really hooked.
And I think maybe there was like a bit of a lull in the middle, not quite hitting the heights of his earlier stuff.
And then lately, I don’t know, I feel like I’m really enjoying his output recently.
Yeah.
And I never would have thought that I would consider myself as a fan boy of it, but the numbers speak for themselves here because this is now the third film from Guy Ritchie we have tackled on the podcast.
To put it in perspective, we had never covered that many films from one director before.
Okay.
We did Wrath of Man and we did Operation Fortune.
Yeah.
We did end up skipping The Covenant, I guess.
I haven’t seen that.
Did you check that one out at all?
Yeah, it was really good.
It was a solid one.
I’ll have to watch it soon.
Yeah.
Do some of that.
After The Covenant, he comes out with this one, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, starring none other than Henry Cavill.
Superman himself.
Superman himself and his native British accent, right?
Finally, he gets to use his native accent.
Man, it is pretty wild that we’re back with Guy Ritchie.
And to give some context here of this movie feeling like it came out of nowhere, it had a release date.
A theatrical release date of April 19th of this year, 2024.
It never came to theaters here.
And if it did, it was in here for maybe a week.
I was going to say, I do not recall even seeing this in the theaters or hearing anything about this.
I think I saw one or two ads.
But yeah, I felt like a lot of his latest movies, even like Wrath of Man or something, which I think both of us really enjoyed that one.
And it felt like it’s just coming out of nowhere.
In this case, it sounds like, I forget the studio who created this film.
Basically, the theatrical rod in the US have been struck a deal with Amazon to do a digital release in some markets.
I don’t know if that includes Canada, where we’re located, but internationally, it probably skipped the theater.
Digital release date, at least in North America, was May 10th.
So really just a few weeks in theaters before it gets that digital rental slash purchase option, right?
Which we were discussing before the podcast of like, it feels almost criminal how quickly movies come out, like video on demand.
And even like our preferred format is buying movies on disc.
We don’t shy away from streaming movies, of course, because it’s hard to resist, especially like a fairly new release.
You’re like, well, of course, I’m not going to wait another two or three months before this hits disc, before watching it.
But I think we had a good point earlier, just we got to record it for posterity here, is that it was really satisfying back in the day to have a movie released theatrically, and then six months later get it on physical, where enough time had passed where I would really look forward to watching it again.
Where here, I watch a movie, and I think we’re using Dune Part II as an example, where it was maybe like two, two and a half months before it came out on disc, and it’s like, that’s just too early to watch a movie of that caliber, like right away.
Like, I needed more time to pass, essentially.
And it’s kind of hurting in the box office, I think, because people know they can just wait for that release, either digitally or the physical edition.
Yeah, I mean, you think of theatrical runs back in a day where movies were in the theater for months and months, and they had the chance to have that word of mouth spread, right?
Like, now it’s like, it feels like by the time word of mouth comes either through friends and family or through online forums, oh, I heard about this really cool movie that I saw in theaters, you should check it out.
It’s like, oh yeah, it’s a month later, and it’s already out of the theaters on streaming or sometimes even on disc already.
It feels like when they talk about movies having legs back in the day, this is what they’re talking about.
The movie was in theaters for months and months.
You got that word of mouth going.
You could build some steam, build some momentum, really optimize.
You want to make some of that budget back.
Let people vote with their dollars kind of thing.
I feel like with the…
I don’t think we’ve really struck that right balance between the theatrical and the streaming and the physical and that kind of release schedule.
I think there’s a balance to be struck.
I don’t want to say that there’s…
Because different people, they have different…
Not everyone wants to go to the theater.
Not everyone wants to stream.
Not everyone wants to buy physical media.
But I think there’s a better balance to be maintained.
Especially from our point of view, from the audience, there’s a specific movie and I want to see more movies of that kind or from that director or from that actor.
And really, we need the chance to vote with our dollars, right?
And quite often on this podcast, we talk about going out and supporting the movies that we talk about.
The first one that comes to mind is Night House, where it’s like…
I think we said, go out, watch this movie, buy this movie.
And we’re a little bit delayed on some of our releases.
We’ll record an event.
A few weeks later goes by.
We right now publish every two weeks.
If we see this movie on release day, we record an episode that weekend and get it released the next weekend, there’s a good chance that movie’s already gone out of theaters now, especially for a release like this.
We can’t produce our recommendations quickly enough to say, yeah, this is worth going out to the theater to see.
It’s like the turnaround time is just so quick.
And that’s what studios are looking for, is that opening weekend box office where if it doesn’t perform, they’ll just immediately pull it or cut the numbers in half.
I can’t remember which movie it was recently where I think it was out for two weeks, and they just cut the theatrical run in half, where I think it had a longer plan in the theaters.
I wonder if that was The Fall Guy, because I know there was big hopes, and it didn’t do as well as people were hoping.
I think it’s an odd space where it’s based on an older property that somebody of our generation probably wasn’t familiar with, The Fall Guy TV show.
From my point of view, it’s kind of a tougher sell, but I think from the people who have seen it, again, it’s that word of mouth.
Everything I’ve heard about it from people who have seen it, it’s really, really good, but because it didn’t hit that opening weekend number, it wasn’t into the atmosphere or into the stratosphere, whatever the quote was from Wolf of Wall Street.
They just give up on it almost.
Instead of like, no, you let it go, let word of mouth take hold, and you try to let that spread amongst the community first.
I feel like they’re not giving those movies a chance.
I don’t want to say dump them on streaming because it diminishes the new model on streaming, but it feels like they’re rushing it out to the platform where the box office numbers become more ambiguous, because it’s all tied up in the streaming service.
The viewership becomes more ambiguous, and you don’t really get that data to justify, do we make another movie like this?
Do we invest in a sequel or not?
It’s just like flipping a coin at that point.
That’s part of the problem with the streaming services.
Just getting that raw data, it’s more complex.
I don’t think we figured that out yet in terms of how to give that feedback to the studios or how studios can make intelligent decisions based on the data yet or how to parse that data out on the streaming side of things.
It’s got to be difficult because I don’t know if we brought this up in our discussion of Furiosa last time where that movie is a Warner Brothers film.
It would basically come out onto MAX, the streaming service, where they’re not obligated, just like Netflix, they’re not obligated to tell anyone how many exact viewers are actually watching this.
They can hide the metrics.
Even from the filmmakers themselves, they don’t really know how, quote-unquote, successful a movie is.
Where back in the day you had the box office, you had video sales, even now with digital sales, you would still have that information somewhere that might be industry published, but these private streaming services, these movies get dumped in there.
Like what you said, it’s just like they disappeared into an ether of like just a big pool of money and viewers and how they decide to split that up or decide if a movie is good on streaming or not, or like is successful on streaming is, that’s gotta be difficult even for the companies themselves.
Yeah.
And like The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, it feels like, to be fair to Guy Ritchie, I’m not trying to diminish it, but it’s like it feels like one of those perfect examples.
It’s kind of middle of the road.
It’s not a big budget, you know, $300 million, you know, superhero movie.
It’s not an indie, low budget, you know, movie about, you know, people dealing with their emotions for an hour and a half.
It’s like in that kind of middle range, right?
It’s a middle kind of mid-budget action adventure based loosely, I’m assuming, on a true story, with Guy Ritchie.
And it feels like this is exactly the kind of movie that back in, you know, you think 30 years ago, which is depressing, back in the 90s, this would have been one of those movies.
It comes out in theaters.
And it doesn’t do super phenomenal numbers in opening weekend, but I feel like this is the kind of movie that would garner word of mouth and hold steady over the course of the weeks and months and really have been a lot more successful under that older model.
And this is the kind of mid-range or mid-budget.
I don’t know what the budget on this thing actually was.
I could be talking crazy.
I’ll tell you exactly what it was.
What is the budget on this?
This movie had a budget of $60 million.
Okay, so this is what we think about in the mid-range budget.
It feels like a movie this size doesn’t really have the marketing budget of the Marvel juggernauts or Star Wars, right?
Or the Fall Guy.
Or the Fall Guy, even like the Fall Guy I heard more about than this, right?
And the Fall Guy kind of fell.
So like, yeah, it feels kind of disappointing where a really solid movie by a really established director, it feels like it just kind of got dropped by surprise on an unsuspecting public with no prior warning, no hype built up, but it feels like it’s going to go away and not make the numbers it should.
And it’s going to be even harder for even someone like Guy Ritchie, because I know I’ve heard, you know, we’ve heard, we as in the general public, like Martin Scorsese’s come out and said, like, yeah, like trying to get The Irishman made.
I was knocking on doors at all the major studios.
And this is Martin Scorsese.
He’s got some street cred.
And it wasn’t until like Netflix picked it up, right?
And kind of saved the day there.
And so it’s like, yeah, it’s even for a big name director, but it’s harder and harder to get that backing for some of your passion projects, or to get some movies out there.
And it’s really kind of frustrating.
Budget $60 million box office in the two or three weeks wherever it was released was about $26 million worldwide.
And we can’t even say that’s a failure or anything, because immediately like before release, Amazon struck this deal with the studio to release it digitally.
So any amount of money, which is going to be undisclosed, maybe the movie’s already paid for itself and everyone’s happy.
This could be a very successful film.
Before we get into the movie discussion, our standard spoiler warning, we don’t hold back on spoilers for the movie we’re discussing.
So consider this your warning.
Check out the movie if you don’t want spoilers.
Check it out right now.
And then come back to our discussion here.
So Guy Ritchie, Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, who I haven’t seen the show, but he’s the star of the Jack Reacher TV show, which I think is pretty popular.
It’s on the watch list, don’t worry.
And then a bunch of faces you’re going to recognize, because this is what Guy Ritchie seems to be able to do.
He seems to be able to pull together a lot of great character actors and put them into a fairly compelling movie, I think, right?
And no different with Ungentlemanly Warfare here.
What were your first thoughts after watching this movie?
Did you like this thing?
You know what?
I had a really good time with it.
I’m using the word solid, which is usually my word for a really good movie.
Didn’t quite hit those heights, but this was a blast to watch.
All the actors were having a good time.
The movie itself was a good time.
You’re killing a bunch of Nazis.
I mean, what’s not to love, right?
Did you get a glorious bastard’s kind of feel off that?
Here’s a group of elite soldiers kind of working covertly, and they’re going to go kick some Nazi butt, right?
Yeah, a little bit of a glorious bastard’s.
A little bit of Guy Ritchie’s earlier heist films.
This almost had like a heist structure to it, where they’re trying to essentially cripple the Nazi U-boat operations in the Atlantic by going and hitting the…
I guess there was a specific ship that would resupply.
It was like the carbon dioxide filters and a couple other key supplies.
So you hit this one ship in this one depot, and it cripples operations for several months, enough to give Britain room to pull in supplies and resist the Nazi advances in Europe.
But it was built around the high structure, and I think that’s Guy Ritchie’s bread and butter.
So bringing that back, it felt like a return to form, really, in a way, for Guy Ritchie.
Honestly, all the characters, all the actors, you could tell they were having a blast on set.
Just hamming it up, chewing some scenery.
But yeah, what was your overall impression of watching this for the first time?
Like, exactly the same where I had a blast watching it.
It was a lot of fun to go through.
It was straight up two hours, 120 minutes long.
Didn’t feel it though.
It didn’t overstay its welcome.
It wasn’t too long, it wasn’t too short.
It was just like the right amount.
And I don’t know, I think Guy Ritchie is super competent when it comes to this stuff.
And I’m glad you mentioned the heist thing, because I kind of forgot that it was his schtick.
And it’s like, of course, there’s scenes where he’s like, we’re planning the heist, and you’re like, all right.
Those, like that plot device, that structure, is always pretty dependable, because as the audience, you know, things are not necessarily going to go exactly as planned here, right?
And that can create a little bit of tension.
It’s part of the fun.
You’re always wondering, like, what’s going to go wrong in this heist, right?
It’s like, oh, everything’s planned perfectly.
Oh, but now the ship is leaving three days earlier than expected, so we got to change direction and sail through Nazi-infested waters.
I was like, oh, no, now they know that they’re, you know, they figured out at the one point, I can’t remember the character’s name, but they figured out she was Jewish, and the Nazis obviously didn’t like that.
That was Eiza González’s character.
You know, it’s like, oh, what’s going to happen next?
You know, like, now they reinforce the plating on the ship.
It’s double-plated, so the explosives we have can’t get through, we can’t sink this thing.
So what are we going to do with this now?
And so it’s always interesting seeing those twists, right?
And again, because it’s based on a true story, and again, assuming because it’s Guy Ritchie, that it’s very loosely based on a true story.
But it’s always interesting to go read up on this and see what the actual operation actually was, and compare and contrast.
Yeah, I briefly looked it up.
Basically, for what I was seeing, this is a heavily fictionalized version of the two events.
And I think it’s based on Operation Postmaster, which did follow sort of a similar situation during World War II.
But I’ll leave a link to that Wikipedia article in there if you want to read the true story.
I didn’t go through it all.
Because a lot of the time, I don’t really care while I’m watching the movie if that’s based on true events or not.
We’re at a point where we know everything is going to be done on screen for the entertainment, right?
It’s just like we’re not going to hue to reality exactly.
And I think Guy Ritchie doesn’t necessarily always, there’s always a heavy fiction in his true stories.
There’s more pulling inspiration from these true events.
100%.
To be clear, the fun part of something that’s based on a true story is then it gives me the impetus.
I was like, oh, I’m going to go read up on that true story now.
I’m well past the point, because I’m not a teenager anymore.
I understand that based on a true story is a meaningless thing.
But then it’s fun.
It’s like, oh, this is another piece of history I don’t know about.
I’ll enjoy the movie for what it is.
It’s historical fan fiction.
And then it’s like, oh, it’s based on a true story.
I’ll go read the true story then.
From somebody who’s interested in history, it’s like a jumping off point to learn something else new.
So it’s that kind of inspiration.
I wouldn’t expect any movie based on a true story at this point to be any degree of truth based on that.
Especially a movie that I think is so much fun.
One of the criticisms that I saw online and a few of the reviews I read is that it didn’t have any tension.
And I think I kind of appreciated that in this movie because, I don’t know, we watch a lot of movies, and sometimes you need a light film to buffer some of the more heavy ones you watch.
So here, I didn’t feel any real tension.
I wasn’t looking for that either.
It’s like, I know possibly a couple characters here might die during the finale.
It doesn’t really matter.
The characters are kind of almost forgettable as they are.
They’re somewhat generic.
So it’s like, I’m just there for the fun time.
Yeah, obviously, Henry Cavill was memorable.
Carrie Elwes showed up.
Also, Til Schweiger, who was also in Inglourious Basterds, another connection, but he’s like, do you need somebody to play a German dude in your movies?
This is the guy you go to in Hollywood.
So this guy’s villain.
Sorry to…
Yeah, this one is the villain.
It’s funny because I was watching, it was like, in Inglourious Basterds, he was the German who joined the Inglourious Basterds and he was killing Nazis.
And this one, he was the Nazi who was being killed.
That’s got to be on purpose, right?
They cast him there for a reason.
But also because he’s a great actor and his villain is so awesome.
He doesn’t do anything overtly villainous during this.
He’s not shooting at the good guys.
He’s not doing any of that.
His presence alone is like kind of scary.
Like other characters, it’s mostly Eliza’s character, Marjorie Stewart, I think.
Yeah, Marjorie Stewart’s a character who’s mostly interacting with him.
And like the scenes where they’re in, like that you feel that evil presence.
And it’s just like, you know, you could see what his possible motivations are, like his possible threats that he could impose upon our characters here.
I thought he did an awesome job for my role.
I think about like the term, like the banality of evil, right?
Where he’s a commander and he’s going through, he’s like, oh yeah, he’s dealing with the, you know, the character Marjorie there is like, oh yeah, we got some gold that we need to sell.
Obviously it’s like, yeah, they’re stealing gold as they’re looting England and they’re trying to, you know, they need, essentially it’s like the equivalent of offense.
We want to sell, you know, we want to transport this.
We want to sell this.
We want to, you know, move stolen goods.
And it’s like, which is like, it’s all like business and talking numbers and this kind of thing is like, yeah, like it’s all, it’s the banality of that evil, right?
It’s like, that’s more frightening than somebody who’s kind of frothing at the mouth, you know, twirling their mustache.
So I know he’s an officer doing his job.
And that’s in a lot of ways more frightening.
But yeah, he did an amazing, he’s amazing.
Everything he did, I think he was also in, was it SLC Punk, I think, going back a ways.
I think that was one of the, maybe one of the first times I saw him, but yeah, he’s great.
Was it Dave again?
It was.
Let’s see if I can remember this.
Oh, Til Schweiger.
And then Rory Kinnear, who you might know from Men, for the dozens of us who watched that movie.
And loved it, by the way, check out Men.
But yeah, Rory Kinnear was in there.
The main dude there, what was his name?
Babs Olusenmokin.
Babs Olusenmokin, played Mr.
Heron.
He was in Dune.
He was the name Javis or Jamis.
The first guy that Paul Atreides killed there.
I was trying to play some of the whole movie.
I was like, this guy looks really, really familiar.
Yeah, he’s an interesting actor.
He’s also in Guy Ritchie’s Wrath of Man.
Yes.
Yeah, I love, there’s something so peculiar about his mannerisms and his voice and his speech patterns.
It’s like, I need to hear more of it.
It’s like, yeah, it’s really cool.
I love when he pops up.
And Eiza González, who is in one of your favorite movies, Ambulance, Michael Bay’s Ambulance from a couple years ago there.
Oh, was she in that?
That’s too bad.
She’s also in Three Body Problem, I think, right?
That I am not sure on.
She’s in Baby Driver.
I just started watching that.
She’s in Alita Battle Angel.
I care a lot as well.
Fast and the Furious.
She has a good, pretty line up of films there.
I knew it.
I thought she looked familiar.
What were some of the negative things about you walked out of here?
Did anything like…
I mean, it wasn’t a five-star film, but it’s like, what were the problems with this film?
No, it’s funny.
The postscript brought up a lot of problems, because Ian Fleming was a character in this.
And for those of you who don’t know, Ian Fleming was the author of the James Bond novels, upon which, of course, the movie franchise was based.
And the post credits, when it’s going through, like, the standard kind of things, like, you know, what happened to these characters afterwards?
And it’s like, oh, yeah, Ian Fleming based his…
Or it was thought that they based it on the character of Gus March Phillips, who portrayed by Henry Cavill.
But I didn’t really get that James Bondiness from that character, so it was like, that kind of came out of nowhere.
Then it also said, it’s like, oh, yeah, Gus and Marjorie got married after this.
And I was like, well, they didn’t really play that relationship up at all in the movie.
They really shared very little screen time at all together, right?
Yeah, it just felt like…
I appreciate the heist structure, but it was just like, Carrie Elway is recruited.
Henry Cavill’s character, their Gus, is like, we need to put together a team.
And it just felt like, OK, he just listed off some names.
And it was like, OK, they’re there.
I was like, well, shouldn’t you go and recruit them?
Where’s the recruiting scenes?
You have to do the heist.
Honestly, that’s what you mentioned.
Where’s the montage of each of these characters doing what they’re really good at and being recruited?
Exactly.
They only recruit the one guy because he’s captured by the Nazis, so they have to free him along the way.
I don’t know.
I wish they would spend more time on those.
We’ve got to recruit these characters, right?
Because they’re all in military prison and they’re all good at stuff.
It’s kind of funny because I wonder if they do that and then the movie becomes even a little too cliché for the heist film.
And here they’re possibly…
Some of that might get cut because they’re at the two-hour runtime and it’s like, oh, the finale is going to be a little more important to draw that out because there’s a lot of fun action to be had there.
No, that could be it, too.
It could be a pacing thing.
And then, for like when they were shooting all the Nazis with their guns, they had the silencers on them the whole time.
It’s like, hey, I’m putting aside how the silencers actually work.
They wouldn’t be that quiet.
But it just felt like the guns they were shooting, didn’t seem like there was a lot of kickback or anything, or like it wasn’t like…
It felt like they were just shooting like cap guns in the backyard.
And there was no weight to some of the gun action and gun violence.
I didn’t get like…
I’m not expecting Tarantino levels of…
Tarantino is a genre unto himself.
But even Guy Ritchie movies previously felt like it had more weight behind some of those actions.
When they did an assault on the Nazi encampment to free their one dude, they’re the one recruiting scene, it just felt like, oh yeah, we just walked in, we’re just picking guys off.
And it was like, not a real, a whole lot of efforts.
And the guns just like felt like they were like pea shooters.
The same thing they’re doing the same, similar, like walk down the pier at the actual depot.
And it was like, was it Palo Alto or whatever the name of the island was.
At nighttime, it was like, oh yeah, just shooting guys at night.
And it was like, I don’t know, those guns didn’t feel like they had a lot of kick to them.
The violence felt a little bit like, a little bit weightless at times.
How about the bow and arrow action?
Let’s show the one character wielded.
Yeah, I’m down with that, actually.
I enjoyed that.
It was kind of like, I don’t know why they did that.
If it was actually some random fact about this dude, real life dude that they picked up and just like overplayed that.
That was Alan Ritchson, by the way, who’s doing that.
Who is, I don’t know what his workout regime is, but it’s working.
It’s working for him.
Like, he’s a huge dude and see them launch those arrows and be like, OK, I can understand.
Like these arrows are going through multiple people and he’s getting the kills.
That was kind of the Bow and Arrow action was a lot more, had a lot more weight to it than the gun action.
Where it’s like, OK, there’s a big dude, Bow and Arrows made sense that they were on a stealth mission.
So it’s like, OK, Bow and Arrow is perfect for that because it has a better chance of piercing kind of modern armor.
And it’s it’s quiet.
It’s like, OK, that actually actually makes a certain kind of sense in this context.
It’s like, oh, sure, I’m done with that.
I’m done with like, you got to have your different different kind of main characters in your in your heist films.
Like they got different sets of skills and you’re different.
When we put together like a band of brothers or a band of warriors in a movie, each one has to have that kind of their unique weapon of choice.
So like somebody likes hand to hand combat, somebody likes machine guns, somebody likes bow and arrows.
It’s almost like I think of it as like the Saturday morning cartoon approach, right?
Where it’s like, OK, you think of the Thundercats is like you got Panther.
He’s this big, strong guy and they got Chitaura.
She’s fast, but you pick up one specific trait for each of your main characters in your group.
And that kind of defines them.
And usually in movies like this, it’s like whatever weapon they like.
And it’s like, yeah, sure, he’s the bow and arrow guy, right?
You had an explosive guy in there too.
You had the explosives guy, right?
Then you have the machine gun loving guys.
Then you have the handgun, people who prefer handguns.
OK, it’s a Saturday morning cartoon kind of logic, right?
It’s like, I dig it, man, I dig it.
I would watch a whole spinoff with this character doing his own thing during World War II.
It would be great.
And that’s the thing.
Killing notches is always good.
Right, like the post script there where they’re talking about some of their future endeavors.
It’s like, oh, maybe we should be getting more of these movies.
If these are based on some true events, fictionalize a few more of them for the big screen here.
This could be a whole trilogy here of Guy Ritchie films.
I want to know why people would think that Ian Fleming would base the James Bond character on that dude because it was nothing like James Bond, right?
Well, yeah, I guess maybe it’s like Guy Ritchie basing it on true stories.
It’s more inspiration.
It’s like Ian Fleming found this guy and it’s like he was inspired to make a spy character that maybe has nothing to do with the characteristics of this guy.
There’s certain expectation when Ian Fleming shows up and he takes a liking to Henry Cavill’s character and you’re like, oh, maybe this guy will have a proclivity for gadgets and weird things.
But no, he doesn’t, right?
He’s just a guns guy.
Yeah, I guess there was a similar background, I guess, to James Bond where it seemed like Henry Cavill’s character even though he was in military prison at the beginning and at the end because apparently he doesn’t play by the rules.
But it was also brought up quite well actually because it didn’t dwell on it, but he was actually educated at a really high end school like Oxford or something.
I don’t know if it was Oxford specifically, but he’s talking to that one, the Prince of the Island there, the self-proclaimed Prince there.
And it’s like, oh yeah, he mentioned something offhand about how at school he saw his, he recognized you from somewhere.
He’s like, oh yeah, you’re in the poster beside the trophy case at school.
So it’s just like James Bond, like they’re very educated and they went on to fight in the war and everything.
So there was some stuff, but it just seemed kind of random.
And it’s like, anytime you bring in a character like Ian Fleming, and it’s like, for those of us who know, it’s like, okay, roll my eyes a little bit.
I knew Ian Fleming was a soldier in the war, and then they bring him in like that.
And I don’t know what the right way to do it is, right?
In this case, I just kind of played him as a regular character, no special attention brought on him.
But I wish like Guy Ritchie and his particular kind of brand of humor, and he could have had a couple of beats in there about, you know, where Gus does something and then you see Ian Fleming thinking about that, or like he’s jotting down notes or something.
It’s like some kind of tongue-in-cheek kind of thing.
I don’t know.
It just felt really weird to have Ian Fleming in there just randomly and not addressed in any way.
I don’t know.
It kind of took me out of it a little bit.
It’s just like everything else in this movie.
It’s just kind of lighthearted and doesn’t really mean a whole lot, right?
It’s just like here’s a little cameo from someone.
If you recognize them, great.
Definition of popcorn flick.
Yeah.
And it’s just too bad we didn’t really get a chance to see it in the theater where I think it would have…
I don’t know if it does well or not, but I would have enjoyed seeing it on the big screen for sure.
Because some of those explosions at the end were really good pyrotechnics going on.
Some good visual effects happening.
Well, and Guy Ritchie can do action really well.
It was a bunch of action at night, but I could still see everything.
You know, it wasn’t a bunch of quick cuts and shaky cam.
Guy Ritchie’s filmmaking with actions, it’s really super clean.
You can follow everything that’s going on.
I think it would lend itself really well to the big screen.
I’m kind of a little disappointed I didn’t get to see this.
A lot of his recent stuff, I wasn’t able to catch it on the big screen either because it had such a short theatrical window.
Or in my area, I didn’t get a theatrical window at all for some of these things.
Yeah.
Maybe my expectations were a bit lower on this film going in because the last one I’d seen from him was Operation Fortune, which was fine, but it seemed to be missing the mark a bit.
Even before that, Wrath of Man was just this really solid, great film overall.
And then we’re kind of back into the higher end of mediocrity, I guess, which kind of sounds like an insult, but it’s not.
It’s just like, this is a movie I would watch again sometime.
I think this was The Covenant, I think was the recent one by Guy Ritchie.
I think that one was a bit more, I think that was the next step up from this.
It was more on par with Wrath of Man where it felt like, okay, this is Guy Ritchie at the top of his game, and this felt more like Guy Ritchie.
It was like, okay, it’s a week, it’s a shoot, we’re down in a tropical location with a bunch of friends, let’s just have a good time and capture someone on camera kind of thing.
It’s like the Adam Sandler School of Filmmaking, the recent Adam Sandler School of Filmmaking.
But yeah, that’s the thing, his recent stuff is like, nothing’s terrible.
He’s putting out solid movies.
I’d almost say he’s putting out too much.
Maybe too much too fast, yeah.
I did see this Kawe of one of the reviews I was reading where they said someone should just tell him to slow down a little bit, take your time with your next movie, maybe wait a full calendar year before popping out another film.
Because we got four of them in the past two and a half years here.
Right, it feels like two a year for the past couple of years.
I don’t know, I remember waiting years and years in between Guy Ritchie flicks before, and then you get these oddball ones like Revolver that didn’t feel like they made an impact on the mainstream consciousness at all.
And yeah, now it’s like, okay, now that we’re getting so many out, I feel like he’s not getting the backing from the studios that he needs in terms of advertising and things like that.
I feel like they’re just like, maybe it’s just luck of the draw, right?
It could just be random chance that his films just didn’t, they weren’t on the whatever the top, you know, top 10 priorities for Amazon or Netflix or whoever owns the rights to those movies.
Maybe it wasn’t, okay, it’s just it’s number 12 on our list.
And so it’s not going to get the budgeting dollars, the budget for marketing dollars that it needs.
I don’t know what it is, but like I think with a bit more marketing, some of these movies like Wrath of Man or The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, they could have they could have made a much bigger impression on a much wider audience.
And it’s kind of frustrating to see that some of these mid budget action movies that used to be bread and butter are almost kind of getting forgotten or tossed aside so quickly.
And there’s there’s so much fun to be had in these movies and it’s so entertaining to see some of his stuff.
Like I’m sitting right now.
I got Wrath of Man on the shelf behind me.
You know, I’m still I’m picking these up and I’m going to watch them again.
Right.
It’s like it’s their fun little flex.
And the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is no different.
I’m going to pick this up.
It’s a great little popcorn flicking.
Put on two hours.
Have a good time.
You don’t have to think too much again.
Sounds like a backhanded compliment.
But it’s really not.
You need those movies in between.
I don’t want every movie to be Schindler’s List, right?
Sometimes you want something a bit heavier and to delve into those serious topics.
Sometimes I just want like two hours of good guys killing Nazis and wrecking Nazi stuff.
Done.
It’s all we need.
Sometimes there’s no better target than just a bunch of Nazis getting blown up.
Killing Nazis and, you know, give me a good heist film.
It’s like I’m the opposite of Rick Sanchez, I guess.
I love a good heist film.
I love a good heist.
So sign me up anytime.
That’s a pretty well said.
And any other comments here before we head into our ratings of the film?
No, I think we pretty much captured everything.
Yeah, it seemed like a pretty good summary there.
Before we jump into our own ratings, we will play the ratings guessing game.
We subject Nathan to this role.
Are you rolling your eyes on this one right now?
No, because I keep, I don’t know why, but I keep forgetting.
I could look this up ahead of time.
It just doesn’t occur to me to look up ratings on movies.
Yeah, you can’t cheat like that.
Sometimes people get too caught up in ratings, and I do feel like that’s part of the issue, which I won’t get into too much, but it’s like people look it up, the critic rating on like Rotten Tomatoes, C Vets, like X percent, and they’re like, that’s not a high enough percentage for me.
I’m not going to go see this movie.
And, you know, we miss out on things.
Where back in the day, like I remember doing this, my family got the newspaper, I’d open up the newspaper, and in the entertainment section was the local critics review of this movie.
And it’s just like, you knew it was one person’s take on it, and that was it.
You had no internet or anything, or like not easy access to the internet, full of every movie critic or person out there.
So you definitely took more chances to go see films and theaters and stuff.
Or it was word of mouth.
It’s like kids at school were talking about this movie.
It’s like, well, I want to see this movie too now.
So first up is the Iran Tomato Critic one we just mentioned.
They used the 100% scale.
What percentage of critics favored, reviewed this movie favorably?
67.
Very, very close.
It’s 70%.
Oh, higher than I thought.
Yeah.
What about the Iran Tomato’s audience?
I will say 73.
Well, can you believe 90%?
90%.
What?
And this is what really gets me this whole discussion.
This is in the back of my head is that the audience is really enjoying this movie.
They’re rating it highly.
I think people are not given the opportunity to go see this movie.
But when you release it digitally, a lot of people can see it very quickly, and a lot of people are really enjoying it.
So, I don’t know.
I think that’s great.
It’s great for Guy Ritchie.
It’s great for all the actors.
It’s great for everyone here.
IMDB uses the 10-point system.
What’s the IMDB user average?
I’m going to go with 6.7.
6.9 here.
6.9, okay.
And Letterboxd, they use the 5-star system.
3.2.
Perfect.
It is 3.2.
Got it.
Add a gold star to your Reel Film Chronicles card.
I’m going to go back to our backlog and listen to all our episodes and see which ones I got right and start keeping score here.
Honestly, I should add that to the spreadsheet there.
And now, for the moment you’ve been waiting for, our personal ratings.
We use the same system as Letterboxd.
That’s kind of our platform where we log and review all our movies.
Five possible stars with a potential heart on top of that.
What’s your 5-star?
What’s your rating on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare?
Yeah, I gave this one a 3.5 out of 5, which is a really good rating.
It’s above average for me.
I don’t think I’d be quite with the 90%, folks.
I thought it was really good, really fun, really entertaining, didn’t overstay its welcome, great popcorn flick, throw one, have a great time, didn’t really have anything really of substance, which is absolutely fine.
But I thought this was a really good movie, and I’ll definitely be picking this one up when it comes out.
How about you?
What’s your overall rating here?
Oh, let me double check what it is.
And yeah, it is also 3.5.
There you go.
Pretty much as you said, this was a fun movie to watch.
And I think the 90%…
Yeah, it’s not 90%, but that is 90% of audience…
Right, right…
.
is favorable to the movie.
And it’s like, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who, like, this is a half-star or a one-star film, right?
There’s lots of good actors here.
Guy Ritchie is a great talent behind the camera.
He’s crafting a, you know, fictionalized version of true events that you’re going to go look up later.
That’s kind of part of the interactive nature of…
Exactly, exactly…
.
based on true events, right, as you were saying before.
There’s good action.
There’s…
Yeah, I don’t know.
I don’t know what else to say about it.
It’s just a lot of fun to watch.
And to call it a popcorn flick, I mean, in this case, it’s great.
We love our popcorn.
So, like…
One day we’ll explain that inside joke.
That just makes it sound suggestive.
Suggestive, though.
We love our popcorn.
Oh, goodness.
Anything else you wanted to mention on this film before we close it out?
If you have a chance, check out The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and studios out there.
Please keep giving Guy Ritchie money to make these movies.
I’m loving this.
It feels almost like maybe a second or maybe a third phase in his career.
And it really feels like, you know, here’s somebody who’s super confident, who’s gone through the trials and tribulations of, you know, like a first time filmmaker and, you know, making his mark with stuff like Snatch and Lockstock and two smoking barrels.
And now he’s making like this felt a lot in the same vein as like Operation Fortune, where it’s just like he’s out there.
He’s having fun.
All the actors seem to be having a blast on screen.
So do yourself a favor.
If you haven’t seen it already, go check it out.
If you’ve seen it already, check it out again.
You’re going to have a good time.
Fantastic.
And I just want a bonus on here.
The next movie for Guy Ritchie is in Letterboxd.
Oh.
It is listed for 2025.
It is called In the Gray.
And it says, two extraction specialists must plan an escape path for a high level female negotiator.
Now, that sounds intriguing, but who are the actors here?
You’ve got Henry Cavill.
Tell me it’s Jason Statham with Henry Cavill.
I don’t see Statham, but it’s Jake Gyllenhaal.
Sign me up.
He was in The Covenant, right?
Yeah, that’s right.
You’ve got Rosamund Pike.
I’m sold.
And you’ve got Eiza González again.
Done.
I’m already there.
Yeah.
There’s a few more actors in there.
Top four in my top row.
Yeah.
I’m really looking forward to the next Guy Ritchie film.
And I got to get caught up on some of the previous ones I’ve missed.
100%.
As always, we appreciate you hanging out with us today and taking the time to listen to our podcast.
You can find us online over at realfilmchronicles.com where we have not just a repository of podcast episodes, but many of our written reviews as well.
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All the links should be within the show notes here.
So until next time, take care of yourself and others and be sure to enjoy your film journey.