The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

"Boys Own"

or

"I Have Good News and I Have Bad News"

The Second World War makes for fascinating history and fascinating reading. The convergence of warfare, technology, and the dark arts of espionage fairly boggles the mind that so much was going on in the background while foot-soldiers and pilots and sailors were slugging it out on the battlefields. The Allies would do anything to gain an advantage. Whether it was Operation Mincemeat, or Operation Crossbow, or Operation Anthropoid or "The Ladies" at Bletchley Park or Alan Turing's "computing machine" or the spies and conspirators at "Camp X", so much was done behind the scenes of "the lines" to disrupt enemy operations or lead them astray that soon the conspirators got caught up in their own chicanery. When secrets were discovered of enemy bombing runs, the information could not be used to save lives lest the enemy discover the Allies' advantage. One cannot calculate the lives that were lost...and needlessly...in order to preserve that most transitory of things, military secrets.

 

They make for good reading,* but Hollywood never seems to think that they'd make good stories unless they're blown up (and real good) to cartoonish proportions. That Operation Crossbow film is a good example of that.

 

Gus March-Phillips in the hirsute form of Henry Cavill

And so is The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Guy Ritchie's new film, which tells the story (sort of) of "Operation Postmaster" an "unofficial" British operation to disrupt the supply chain to German U-boats (or anything else) by dispatching ships that the Special Operations Executive suspected were running arms for the Germans. It was a short operation—roughly 30 minutes—where what was called The Small Scale Raiding Force, under the command of Gus March Phillips, hijacked three ships from the Spanish harbor of Fernando Po in Spanish Guinea, while the ships' officers were being thrown a party ashore (by an SOE agent). The SSRF delivered the ships to the Navy a few days later.

Lassen, March-Phillips and Hayes update a German war-ship on the floppy state of its captain.

Well, that sounds exciting enough, but the screenwriters aren't happy with that, so they invented rescues, subterfuges, feints, a honey trap, and various bloody attacks to complicate the story and make it more of an episode of "Mission: Impossible" than what actually happened, no matter the "Based on a True Story" card that starts the film. The filmmakers take it too far and not far enough—the actors hardly resemble their real-life counterparts and their fighting skills are far more athletic and balletic than the training required of what was called a "butcher and bolt" unit. And although much play is made of the crew being "'A'-Team" "mad," the SSRF has been more described as amphetamine-popping sociopaths (all in a good cause, of course).

In the movie, that's Ian Fleming in the middle and Gubbins on the right.

(Fleming wasn't even in this branch, although he did do some spy-work)

So, don't believe what you see—it's not a true story in the way its being portrayed—and I'll shut up about the discrepancies and just talk about what's there on-screen, although don't be surprised by a pervasive grumbling tone.

It seems that England is having difficulties with German U-boats patrolling the Atlantic, disrupting shipping lines and destroying relief efforts sent from the United States—which is still reluctant about entering the war with troops, despite Germany goose-stepping all the way to France. For Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Rory Kinnear, unrecognizable in make-up), this is infuriating: even if America did send troops, there's a good possibility that the troop transports would be sunk, and any aggressive action is opposed by His Majesty's Government and by the British Navy. Churchill decides to take covert action through the SOE—"Hitler is not playing by the rules and so neither are we"—to take out any boats they can find at sea and try to disrupt the German's supply lines to the U-boats.

SOE's head Brigadier Colin Gubbins (Cary Elwes), with help from his adjutant Ian Fleming (Freddie Fox) spring Gustavus March-Phillips (Henry Cavill) out of irons and tells him of their plans to sink the Duchessa d'Aosta, an Italian merchant ship docked at the port of Santa Isabel on the Spanish island of Fernando Po that reconnaissance has determined is a supply ship for the German U-boats. March-Phillips is informed that two SOE agents, the already established-in-Fernando Po Heron (Babs Olusanmokun, who has become a favorite of mine since playing the ship's doctor on "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds") and Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González, who I'm glad is there even though Marjorie Stewart had no part of the mission) are already on their way to Fernando Po by train to lay the ground-work for their operation.

March-Phillips, while taking the time to mooch booze, cigars and Fleming's lighter, is understandably skeptical ("We both know I'm not very popular with this current administration) and he warns that the troops he wants to gather for the mission are a bit unorthodox ("You won't like them...they're all mad"), and is reassured that he has discretion as the job doesn't officially exist (nor will it ever exist, seeing as they're going to be attacking a Spanish port and Spain is being obstinately neutral in the war as its Prime Minister, Franco, is obstinately a fascist).

One of his proposed team, the master planner of his outfit, Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer) is a prisoner of the Nazis, and March-Phillips and his crew—Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson, streaming's "Reacher"), Henry Hayes** (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), and explosives expert Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding)—do a side-trip rescue on the way, using their Brixham fishing trawler, Maid of Honour, as their transport.

That's a lot of set-up exposition, but one of the strengths of Richie's direction—and of the screen-writers—is that it all gets taken care of quickly, amusingly, and lets you know who's who and what's what before settling into the details and taking care of the action, which is fast, brutal, and probably far beyond what the actual team doing the mission did. Oh, they were perfectly capable of filleting a man with a knife—as happens frequently in the movie—but, the action is just too choreographed to be in any way realistic. Efficient and fast, certainly, but, once a jugular is slit, why keep stabbing?

There's also an air of pushing the "aren't we crazy" throughout, an inherent smugness that carries on throughout the movie. Usually, Cavill is the most visible culprit of this in whatever he plays, and, yes, in the film's first 45 minutes, he succumbs to that—Florence Pugh's line "What a poser..." kept coming to mind—but, eventually he settles down, stops grand-standing, and towards the end, is a welcoming commanding presence and then, towards the end, exquisitely delivers a good James Bond-ish line: "Marjorie! Over-dressed and under-dressed at the same time...as usual."

An aside: Here's an issue that irked me—The "James Bond" angle. Sure, they uncomfortably shoe-horned Ian Fleming (Bond's creator) into the narrative, then capped the movie by saying that Cavill's character, March-Phillips, was Fleming's inspiration for Bond, but I've heard others, including William Stephenson, were Fleming's model—there has been so much speculation and it's usually based solely on trying to make some correspondent's subject matter more important (or at least "buzz-worthy") than it would be without it. Fleming saw a lot of spy-craft during the war, but I think he got his main inspiration by looking in the mirror and fantasizing.

It's a good adventure flick with the added bonus that SOME of it is true, and, surprisingly, in some of the details that they don't make a point of, but it's a bit of over-kill on many levels. War is butchery, after all, and there's quite a bit of evisceration in this film. At one point, in taking over the ships, Ritchson's Anders goes through picking off crew-men, starting with bow and arrows (his specialty), then knives, then an axe, all done with a blood-thirsty glee. "Good times". But, maybe that wouldn't have been as entertaining as what the "mad" "crazy" "sociopathic" members of the SSRF really did when the took over those ships in 1942.

Those crew-men that didn't put up a fight they took prisoner, 29 in all, and turned them over to the British Navy.

The Small Scale Raiding Force—No. 62 Commando

 

Top: Maj. Gustavus March-Phillips, Geoffrey Appleyard,  Graham Hayes, Anders Lassen

Bottom: Marjorie Stewart, Major Colin 'M' Gubbins

The Target
 

* One of my most enjoyable times reading one of these histories is "The Man Called Intrepid" by William Stevenson, published in 1976, about William Stephenson. It's fascinating reading, but some of its validity has been called into question.

 

** The man's name was actually Graham Hayes, and can't think of a logical reason why they might have changed it.

The Woman King

Amazon-Prime

or

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

 

Warriors of the Oyo Empire are having their evening meal. Prisoners from the Dahomey and other territories to be sold to the slave trade are kept in huts and don't dare go up against these fearsome soldiers or they'll be killed and they can't run because they use horses. But, it's a quiet night and not even the animals are stirring in the tall grass. A burst of bird-flight spooks one of the younger soldiers and the others enjoy a good laugh at his expense.

 

It will be their last laugh.

 

Out of the grass, silently, rises many women, suited for battle and with battleaxes resting on their shoulders. On point is Nanisca (Viola Davis), with a look so fierce and baleful that if the warriors knew ice-water it would be running in their veins. She raises her axe and with a ululating cry storms forward with the rest of her warriors, all women. They are the Agojie, the specialist unit of women-warriors from Dahomey, who expect and demand the respect of their citizens, and who run out of the brush like a wave, axes flashing. They won't flash for very long as Oyo blood will dull them.

One may gripe about the super-hero glut of movies, even though they have abated somewhat as studios find their footing with them. But they have paved a way for people to accept the "adventure" movie as a good evening's entertainment even if not populated with people in spandex. The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood, owes quite a bit to that trend, seeing as it shepherded a precedent for studios to consider financing a film about woman-warriors (Wonder Woman) and African locales and story-lines (Black Panther). Those were fantasies, however. The Woman King purports to tell history.

It is 1823 and the kingdom of Dahomey, under King Ghezo (John Boyega) is approaching the time when they must pay tribute to the Oyo and its leader, General Oba Ade (Jimmy Odukoya), despite that the leader is known for raids and for interfering in Dahomey's own trade with Europeans for slaves and other resources. It is the Oyo plan to absorb Dahomey and eliminate its influence; why accept tribute when they can have it all? The raids are merely prelude for an inevitable attack, and Ghezo seeks to forestall the inevitable by accepting the Oyo demands.

But, Nanisca, leader of the Agojie warriors, knows that the Dahomey are merely being bled slowly before an inevitable take-over bid, and suggests the training of new recruits to fend off any new raids. The rescued women are brought into the Agojie training facility, as well as other women who volunteer or who are too rebellious to become slaves or wives. In that latter category is Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), who has some rough edges that need to be disciplined and "smoothed over" before she earn her place among the warriors, or risk being sold for failing.

She comes under the tutelage of the trainer Izogie (Lashana Lynch), who recognizes the girl's defiance but also potential. The film follows Nawi's training, but also her relationship with a half-Portugese/half-Dahomey trader (Jordan Bolger) who is not unsympathetic to his kingsmen, but also has to live in another world, too.

This is great adventure movie material, but the distinction is that it is told from the native's point of view, not from the colonialists'. And, despite the inclusion of that trader, there is no "outsider savior" to intermingle and "help" or even explain the situation. Which is as refreshing as it is long overdue. The basic storyline is as old as Kurosawa, but how they play it is as old as Spartacus.

There has been some yelping about history and inaccuracies (and I'm usually the first "yelper"), about how the kingdom of Dahomey was just as culpable in the slave trade (and it very much was), but The Woman King does not shy away from that fact, instead concentrating on the Agojie and their efforts to stop the influence of the Oyo Empire over their affairs. And there is the acknowledgment that the rulers of Africa were just as complicit in trading human beings as the Europeans—just less efficient and far-reaching. There have always been slaves, just the definition of civilization has changed.

That's an important statement to make. And it features in the story by actor Maria Bello and Dana Stevens' script. The slave trade has always been a sensitive subject and a more complicated one than the safe narrative (if it is allowed to be spoken about at all!) that has been agreed upon, and is part of the larger story of power and oppression than the narrative of any one race. The story of agency and a people's ability to achieve it is the ultimate story of the ascent of human-kind.

And that is a story vigorously told in The Woman King. That the story is fascinating without white-washing in the broader points is an example of just how bold the artisans making the film are. And that goes to the actors as well. Viola Davis has long been a national treasure and her performance as Nanisca is traditional in its depiction of scowling generals who fight the periphery of what is lost to achieve what is to be gained. And watching her walk in this film is one of the subtle joys I had in this movie. Lashana Lynch wins the Toshiro Mifune Award for making the most of a role that could be cliched but instead seems fresh and more than just what appears on the page—she has a habit of doing that.

 

It's a great cast in a great movie. Highly recommended.