'The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare' review: An inglorious mess

Like a charm deficient "Ocean's Eleven" mixed with a tensionless "Inglorious Basterds," Guy Ritchie's glib, stakes-free "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" is an exhausting historical caper where nothing matters except for Ritchie's own sense of self-satisfaction.

The writer-director stages a declassified chapter of British history as a parade of spy movie clichés, not so much parodying them as reinforcing them and driving them into the ground. Slick, stylized and devoid of human emotion, "Ministry" is serviceable as a product but soulless at its core. Look closely and you can see it's dead inside.

Henry Cavill stars as Gus March-Phillipps, a real-life major in the British Army who leads a mission to take out some Nazis during World War II. His partners include Anders "The Danish Hammer" Lassen ("Reacher's" Alan Ritchson), Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun) and Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González), each of whom possess their own special set of skills; Anders, for example, is a master archer, able to kill multiple people with a single arrow without breaking a sweat.

They're commissioned by Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear) and commanded by Brigadier Gubbins (Cary Elwes), code name "M," who leads them into a covert operation dubbed Operation Postmaster, wherein they'll board and take over several Nazi U-boats. And of course it's all handled off-the-books, giving the ungentlemanly gentlemen a rogue sensibility and letting them operate in a sort-of legal gray area.

Ritchie treats his story like a cousin to Tarantino so much that he could call this "The Ministry of Inglorious Warfare," and he at least has the good sense to cast "Basterds" alum Til Schweiger as the head Nazi. But he presents his heroes in such a cloak of invincibility that there's never any threat of danger to any of them, no matter how many baddies they're up against, and as a result he can't ratchet up any suspense in the scenes where they're supposed to face some sort of risk. Its attitude is so flippant — even the movie's name seems like a last laugh on ungainly title constructs — that it's impossible to invest in any of the characters as anything other than avatars of rugged detachment.

Ritchie, 55, rifles through projects so fast — this is his fourth movie since 2021, and he also currently has a series on Netflix based on 2019's "The Gentlemen" — that they feel impersonal, like work for the sake of keeping the work going. There's something to be said for that level of output, but "Warfare," even while based on an particularly interesting piece of history (adjacent to the backstory of James Bond, no less), feels like just another lads on a mission tale. It's competently made but leaves you with nothing to hang on to, so slick that it completely slips away.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare'

GRADE: D

Rated R: for strong violence throughout and some language

Running time: 120 minutes

In theaters