Movie Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

The main problem with the new World War II movie "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" is that when you take a light and sometimes comic spin concerning stories about real soldiers and spies during the worst war in human history, at times, it can disrespect the people who risked their lives to defend their country. The TV show "Hogans Heros", comes to mind - that tried during its run, to make life as a prisoner in a German prison camp seem comical. As the entire world knows, nothing is funny about any part of the Second World War.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is directed by Guy Richie and is two hours that seems a lot like many of his other movies that have involved war, criminals, or spying. This movie has many well-known actors playing spies in the British Secret Service, including Henry Cavill as Gus March-Phillips, Alan Ritchson as Anders Lassen, Alex Pettyfer as Geoffrey Appleyard, Eiza González as Marjorie Stewart, Cary Elwes as Brigadier Gubbins 'M' and Hero Fiennes Tiffin as Henry Hayes.

This story follows two groups of British spies, one group is trying to infiltrate the German high-level military and the other group blows up German military installations and kills a great many German soldiers. The over-the-top killing scenes have more to do with Hollywood violence embellishment than trying to show what really happened during these missions. The actor Alan Ritcheson has the most outlandish and violent killing scenes that seem more like excerpts from one of the 4 "John Wick" films. When it comes to making any movie about World War II, it should always be accuracy first and insane action scenes to make an exciting movie trailer second.

From the relatively low 72% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for this run of the mill war movie that we have all seen before, the opinions are mostly about "nothing new here" , rather than commenting on a great historical World War II story that most of the world has never heard of before. My rating is about 70% and a moderate pass, as this is more about John Wick type action and not about a significant story within the most important war in history.