The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

*MINOR SPOILERS*

Rotten Tomatoes: 69%

Box Office: 27.3 million USD

My Rating: 3/10

Description: With the United Kingdom seemingly losing the war to Germany in 1941, Colin Gubbins "M" (Cary Elwes) decides to recruit Gus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) and his allies to destroy an important Italian supply ship by sea. Meanwhile, Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González) attempts to gather more information for the mission by seducing SS commander Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger). In the end, to keep the mission going, they all must resort to positions that will either get them killed by their enemies or arrested by their own side.

My Thoughts: It's like Inglourious Basterds, only with goyim, unnecessary exposition, and poorly written dialogue. If I'm being honest, this movie was an assassination of story structure. At first I made a joke that I wasn't mad at it, I was only disappointed; but then the entire movie started to make me irrationally angry. Several times, I had to pause it and take a break to be able to gather my thoughts. This was essentially a war film for people who are afraid of war films. The Nazis were evil, but they weren't stupid. The main characters cut the power at a Nazi party and go on a killing spree, and not a single German soldier thinks to sound the alarm. Closer to the end, the head of the entire Nazi operation gets gunned down in cold blood and no one notices. As a matter of fact, along with the pathetic excuse for a film riddled with historical inaccuracies and the trauma porn, this was definitely in the top three of worst war movies I've ever seen. When Til Schweiger was originally offered the role of Hugo Stiglitz in Inglourious Basterds, he turned it down because he knew what kinds of things the Nazis had done and couldn't bring himself to put on the uniform. He only accepted it after finding out he would only be wearing the uniform in scenes where his character was killing Nazis. The two questions I have are, "What made him accept this specific role in this movie?" and "WHAT MADE HIM ACCEPT THIS SPECIFIC ROLE IN THIS MOVIE?" Beyond that, I couldn't even take Winston Churchill seriously because the actor, Rory Kinnear, looks nothing like him. The only part in the whole film that was even somewhat clever was when Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox) introduced himself in the same way as James Bond, the character he would invent in the future. Other than the points previously outlined in this review, I can't think of a single reason as to why this movie would flop at the box office.

Best Line: "You should make him walk the plank. He loves wood."