Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (April 8)

Comparisons abound with Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds and all I can really say is it’s not that. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is far blacker and gayer than its predecessors and that’s a good thing, but it also feels very much at home in the Guy Ritchie catalogue of fast-paced, quick-witted, punchy-lined action films with macho men beating up chumps to settle scores.

This was a Screen Unseen film from a few weeks ago that I got to see with Friend while he was staying in the neighborhood. The theater’s morale was high throughout, because the pacing for this film was quick, lean, and disciplined. The action sequences are legible in a way that is completely untrue of something like Monkey Man, where it’s at times impossible to tell who is hitting whom or why someone has been standing where they have for so long. Probably the way that Richie is able to achieve this long, wide shots of his heroes sniping Nazis from afar is by telling them to collapse on cue, but it actually makes for a much more enjoyable viewing experience.

Eiza Gonzalez, the movie’s lone lady, holds her own with the boys by repeating German riddles and participating in antisemitic bashing, which actually sounds pretty bad, but is really entertaining. The costume ball – which she performs at! – is one of the truly wonderful absurdist touches to the movie.

So much of the snappy dialogue between macho Englishmen in Richie films flirts with the ability of these hot straight guys to eye fuck each other and drop some sexual innuendo, and far be it from me to allege gaybaiting. Actually, one of the first articles that pops up when you’re looking into this is from a piece a decade ago that claims that Richie’s Man from UNCLE belongs to bisexuals (“fight me”), so maybe we ought to be saying that Richie has always created a space for sexual representation and ambiguity is a good, healthy thing.

Come for the action sequences, stay for the dead Nazis.