The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

April 19, 2024 9:01 PM

The British military recruits a small group of highly skilled soldiers (Henry Cavill, the Large Guy from Jack Reacher, Henry Golding) to strike against German forces behind enemy lines during World War II. (Guy Ritchie directs.)

How much you enjoy this may hang on whether you like action films where the bad guys lose primarily through being stupid and incompetent. I find I'm getting tired of them, so I got a little bored. But, you know, defeating Nazis, and if you enjoy watching Large Guy kill people, he does a lot of that. Also not as mean-spirited or as cynical as many of Ritchie's recent actioners; maybe the WWII setting is a moral tonic for him.

posted by praemunire (9 comments total)

It's interesting, because Wrath of Man, while a nasty piece of work altogether and featuring Jason Statham doing the semi-superhuman bit that tends to undermine tension, was nonetheless effectively structured as an action movie with actual challenges and stakes for the protagonist. I didn't see Covenant, but all his other later movies have been less and less effective as action films, which would be fine, except the style is wearing thin.

I also had the uncomfortable feeling that audiences were meant not to notice that Golding is not white, which is...not great.
posted by praemunire at 9:06 PM on April 19

The original book was very much not an action thriller. Kind of disappointed that we aren't seeing that story.
posted by wenestvedt at 11:26 AM on April 20

I also had the uncomfortable feeling that audiences were meant not to notice that Golding is not white, which is...not great

What do you mean? Isn't this kind of colour blind casting getting fairly common?
posted by Sebmojo at 12:48 PM on April 20

Color-blind casting doesn't mean "pretend that the actor doesn't have a particular racialized identity." There's a difference between casting the second-tier character described in the script as "Freddy the munitions guy" with Henry Golding, therefore deciding his character is an escapee from the Japanese occupation of Singapore or similar, and casting Henry Golding as a character who otherwise seems to function as white, particularly in a war in which racial ideology was a huge part of the combat. We hear about the Dane's Danishness and his distinct reasons for hating the Nazis, the African "prince"'s background and why he hates the Nazis, the woman agent's Jewishness (and thus, obviously, her own distinct motivations), hell, we even hear that the Irish kid is Irish, though not much else, but Freddy is just...Freddy, seemingly just another of the white English group with the leader and the strategist guy. And he's shot in a way (almost always keeping his cap on, for example) that I can easily imagine a viewer who didn't know not realizing that Golding is British-Malaysian. It took me a minute to recognize the actor myself.
posted by praemunire at 5:55 PM on April 20 [1 favorite]

Color-blind casting doesn't mean "pretend that the actor doesn't have a particular racialized identity."

Um. That's literally what it means. It's why you could go to the RSC and see a black Hal with a Chinese Falstaff. Or Iannuci's David Copperfield.
posted by Grangousier at 2:17 AM on April 21

Can we not do the "I really don't understand racism" bullshit tapdance in here?
posted by anansi at 2:37 AM on April 21 [4 favorites]

Um. That's literally what it means. It's why you could go to the RSC and see a black Hal with a Chinese Falstaff. Or Iannuci's David Copperfield.

No, it's considerably more complicated than that, but if this is going to be a discussion where people don't see anything unsettling about a movie where an actor seems to be literally deracialized--where you're not seeing Dev Patel, the Indian actor, as Copperfield, but Henry Golding, British-Malaysian actor, as white actor playing white character--I think it's going to be a little too 101 for me.

I'm not sure this was actually Ritchie's intention, but he does have some weird racial issues (see The Gentlemen) and it really did cross my mind more than once during this movie, and it was not something I went in looking for or had even thought of as a possibility before.
posted by praemunire at 9:28 AM on April 21 [1 favorite]

I found the movie fun (if a little heavy on the killing) but it was surprisingly... undramatic? There weren't really any plot twists, which surprised me. Most of the scheme went according to plan, and even the last minute wrinkle didn't feel as though it changed their strategy very much. I found myself wishing that the whole thing had been a bit more clever.
posted by cider at 10:00 AM on April 30

Outrageous levels of laziness have become a Ritchie hallmark, I fear, hampering films that are okay but could've been considerably better, like Man from UNCLE.
posted by praemunire at 2:20 PM on April 30