After the feverish suckitude of 2017’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, a purely fiduciary gift to Disney shareholders with 2019’s Aladdin and the Asylum-version-of-Kingsman aesthetic of 2020’s The Gentlemen, it was reasonable to assume Guy Ritchie’s fastball had failed him.

But the filmmaker has since tossed four consecutive heaters. In 2021, he delivered his best crime film in years with Wrath of Man. Last year, he delivered the double shot of Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (a cheeky Mission: Impossible piss-take) and the meaty, melancholy Afghanistan war film Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Add to the list The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a slice of liberally embellished, men-and-women-on-a-mission history that offers analog pleasures aplenty. And for once, it’s also a fun Winston Churchill movie!

Adapted from a book of the same name written after a 2016 declassification of prime minister Churchill’s files, the film introduces us to the real-life rogues’ gallery of brawlers and schemers that made up Britain’s Special Operations Executive. At Churchill’s suggestion, the idea was to play outside the lines of parliamentary permission and sabotage activities Nazi-occupied Europe in support of the Allies’ World War II effort.

Considered a forerunner of black-ops tactics, the unit was partly managed by Ian Fleming (played here by Freddie Fox), and Fleming allegedly modeled James Bond after the personality of SOE leader Gus March-Phillipps. Gus is played by one-time 007 candidate Henry Cavill, making his return to the Ritchie Repertory Players a decade after the buoyant The Man from U.N.C.L.E. While there’s nothing suave about the shaggy Gus — who shakes officers’ nerves rather than martinis — his intuition for international espionage is certainly an inspiration.

Gus is tasked by Churchill (an unrecognizable Rory Kinnear) and Brigadier Gubbins — code-named “M,” tee-hee, and played by Cary Elwes — to lead Operation Postmaster. Allied efforts to slow Hitler’s march will  require American assistance, but the United States will not enter Atlantic waters as long as German U-boat submarines roam them unfettered. 

Under the guise of a Swedish fishing trawler, Gus and his crew sail to take down a trio of boats docked near a Spanish-controlled, African-coast island called Fernando Po. Here, German, Spanish and Italian military forces have a combined presence to protect precious cargo. Sinking these boats will also sink at least six months worth of carbon dioxide that the U-boats will need to dive, and perhaps encourage America to finally join the fight.

Joining Gus on the boat are: Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson of Reacher), who’s known as the Danish Hammer and is an ace with an archer’s bow; explosives expert Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding of Crazy Rich Asians); gunner extraordinaire Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin); and, if they can first spring him from Nazi captivity, wily strategist Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer). Nazis have violently wronged all of them in the past, and they all want their turn at the hunt.

Matching their considerable brawn are the formidable brains of Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun of Dune) and Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González of AmbuLAnce) — who toil as fixers and spies on Fernando Po itself and run interference to keep occupied the brutal Nazi commandant Heinrich Luhr (a hissable Til Schweiger). If intercepted by British officers, they’ll be arrested for violation of neutrality laws with Spain. If caught by the Germans, Italians or Spaniards at any point, well … you know. And if Britain’s Parliament finds out, that’s the end for Churchill, too.

In actuality, none of these aggressors attempted in earnest to stop the SOE’s plans for the ships. That’s because the ships may not have been carrying carbon dioxide at all. In real life, Operation Postmaster was essentially a training exercise and proof of concept for the SOE. And it also took place shortly after Pearl Harbor, at which point America already decided to enter the fray. But as that would be a boring movie, Ritchie and his team of co-writers (including Oscar nominee Paul Tamasy) concoct all manner of complicated timetables, tactics and traps.

If The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare owes more to the literature of Alistair MacLean than the historical record, that’s perfectly fine. Ritchie’s work is certainly more exciting and engaging than similar works in the recent subset of WWII covert operations like Operation Mincemeat, Valkyrie and Operation Finale. Certainly, none of those had the secret weapon of Ritchson — both affecting a pinched, high-pitched sing-songy Swedish accent to fool Germans into believing him docile and destroying them on the regular with delightful speed and violence. He and Cavill have fun as men whose character-driven cover stories mainly consist of how long they can keep from laughing at the idea they won’t just beat the piss out of pompous Germans.

You can also see characteristics of crucial allies to 007 like Ali Kerim Bey in characters like Kambili Kalu (Danny Sapani), a mover and shaker who commands a crew eager to cast off the shackles of colonial subjugation. Ritchie never loses sight of this rugged, rumbling undercurrent of revenge, especially given the skin color Luhr most loves to flay from victims’ bodies, and it affords Olusanmokun impressive, subtle disruption to the still waters of his smooth operator.

Is this basically Cavill playing Hannibal in a project that could be called The A(llied) Team? Yes. What The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is not is Ritchie’s way-too-late riff on something like Inglourious Basterds, even if it does also feature Schweiger and indulge in its own musical anachronism (a brief lift from Lalo Schifrin’s Dirty Harry score). Ritchie may no longer command big budgets, but he’s commanded something far better — a renewed sense of purpose and fun.