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THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE – Chris Benstead
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughan do like making film and TV projects about ‘gentlemen,’ don’t they? After the 2019 film The Gentlemen, and the spinoff TV series of the same from earlier this year, we now have The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a comic-book style action adventure set during World War II. Unexpectedly, the film is based on a mostly true story; it stars Henry Cavill as Major Gus March-Phillips, who in 1942 was recruited by Winston Churchill himself to carry out a dangerous secret mission codenamed Operation Postmaster, which required March-Phillips and his team to travel to the island of Fernando Po off the coast of west Africa and destroy the Italian ship Duquesa d’Aosta, thereby cutting off the supply chain to Nazi U-Boats in the north Atlantic. What follows is an unexpectedly violent but also tongue-in-cheek boys own adventure full of exotic locations, evil Nazis, spectacular action sequences, and lots of witty banter between March-Phillips and his men. Interestingly, one of the supporting characters in the movie is a young British officer named Ian Fleming; the real life Fleming supposedly based his character James Bond in part on March-Phillips and his exploits. Read more…
WRATH OF MAN – Chris Benstead
Original Review by Jonathan Broxton
Wrath of Man is a complicated action revenge thriller directed by Guy Ritchie, and is an English-language remake of the 2004 French film Le Convoyeur. The film stars Jason Statham as ‘H,’ the mysterious new employee of a security company which moves money all around Los Angeles in armored cars. The monosyllabic Englishman proves to be excellent at his job, and is instrumental in foiling an armed heist of the truck he is driving with his partner, Bullet (Holt McCallany). However, it slowly emerges that there is more to ‘H’ than meets the eye, and a labyrinthine plot emerges involving organized crime, a group of disgruntled former US marines, and the death of ‘H’s son. The film co-stars Scott Eastwood, Jeffrey Donovan, and Josh Hartnett, among others, and is an enjoyable festival of violence, filled with guns blazing, cars crashing, and Jason Statham doing Jason Statham things – although there was an undercurrent of misogyny and homophobia in the testosterone-overloaded screenplay that I found a little unpalatable. Read more…
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