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.

Men

I was going to publish this earlier in the week, but even as I parsed out the film while writing this, I decided that it would best be left for Saturday, which is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

 

They're All Alike

or

Literally, I Don't Know What's Going On
 

Harper Marlowe (Jessie Buckley) wants to "get away from it all." She's just suffered a traumatic incident in her life: an argument with her husband James (Paapa Essiedu) over a divorce has resulted in his death—but whether it was a deliberate suicide or an accident is a matter of conjecture. Harper, however, feels responsible, even if the argument was a case of deflection, mutual accusations and a fight ended in her being hit. She had no control over James' actions and was locked in her apartment when she suddenly sees husband him fall past her window to be smashed on the pavement below. 

 

Some time has now passed and we watch Jessie drive away from London in her Ford Fiesta as the roads get narrower and the surroundings get more rustic. She is in the country, moving away from us to the background of Lesley Duncan's "Love Song" promising calmer surroundings and bucolic settings in which to recover, heal, and contemplate. She's alone now, and it appears that there will be plenty of time for her to get herself together.

Her destination is a country house four hours out of town, and its a lovely old structure, 500 years old—"Shakespeare. Or pre-" explains the owner, Geoffrey (Rory Kinnear)—but with all the modern conveniences like inside plumbing, gas range, motion-sensor lights outside, and a lovely orchard dominated by a large apple tree, which (of course) compels her to pluck a fruit and take a large bite—Oh, that never works out good in stories. Geoffrey even makes a joke out of it "No-no-no-no-no-no-no. Mustn't do that. Forbidden fruit" then, he smiles a wide toothy grin and says it's just a joke, eat all she wants "make a chutney if you want." He gives her a tour of the place and it's a combination of ancient and modern, the walls painted an earthy red. That'll come in handy later. Blood-splatter and all.

She's all by herself—although Geoffrey reassures her he lives right down the lane—alone with her thoughts. She's still going over the argument in her mind, and the image of James falling past her window. She's haunted by it, the image of him on the ground, ankle shattered and twisted at an odd angle, his arm impaled at the wrist by a wrought-iron fence. She can't shake it, so she takes Geoffrey up on a suggestion to go on a nature walk. The pathways are rough and she gets a little lost until she comes across an overpass that produces a long tunnel with some interesting echoing aspects. But, at the other end she sees a figure who watches her and then runs towards her. She turns and runs back the way she came, but she gets lost and when another blocked overpass stops her cold, she roughs it up an embankment and continues her way back to the B and B.

She passes by a ramshackle house in terrible disrepair and decides to take a picture. But, when she views the snap...standing in front of it is a naked man (Rory Kinnear). She looks up from the camera and there he is, scratched up, scarred and watching her. She runs back to the B and B and calls a friend (Gayle Rankin), but while she's talking to her she doesn't notice that the man is now in the orchard and staring in the windows at her. When she finally notices, she calls the police and the man is arrested by a couple officers (Rory Kinnear and Sarah Twomey) and he's taken away—a vagrant, apparently, and considered "harmless."

But, he's not, is he? After her estranged husband's death, and then this creep, Harper no longer feels safe, not even in the house. But, the guy's in jail, right? So she goes on another walk around and comes across an ancient church. No one there. So, she sits and contemplates and the grief comes pouring out of her. The church vicar (Rory Kinnear) observes from afar, but does not approach. Outside, she encounters a tween (Rory Kinnear) wearing a Marilyn Monroe mask and starts hectoring her. The vicar interrupts, words are exchanged, and the kid stomps away, leaving Harper and the vicar to discuss her break-down in the church. But, the conversation leans into the accusatory even as the vicar leans in to touch her leg.

Ew.

Alex Garland's third film, Men, is a creepy, methodical horror film that finds dread in even the most innocent-seeming circumstances. One starts looking around corners of the screen for the out-of-place and off-putting, every note, every beat, every sound designed to put you on your guard. All that detail and all that deliberateness stands in the service of putting us in Harper's head-space of grief and isolation, where inner thoughts and outer appearances are mutual threats to the being. Then, when these men (Rory Kinnear) start showing up, all of them are passive-aggressive or just plain aggressive, not passing up an opportunity to imply, or judge, or man-splain, or dismiss...or accuse...or invade. It's clear that Garland is saying something about the lot of women, and the guarded world-view of threat that is endured on a day-to-day basis.

All well and good. Up to a point. As good a job as Kinnear does playing multiple roles in distinctly creepy ways, the fact that all the men are him creates a sense of false narrative to the point where we start questioning not them...but her and her state of mind. These guys can't be all the same person—there's a bar scene where everybody is played by Rory Kinnear (Rory Kinnear)—so, is there something wrong with her, with her perceptions? If the point was to show her threatened in a toxic man-verse, adding the doppelganger casting undermines it...and her.

The problem is compounded in the film's closing moments when the film escalates into gory/grotesque assault mode with stuff that surpasses the creepiness factor of John Carpenter's version of The Thing. What are we to make of these manifestations popping out of each other's orifices? Is it real? (Probably not). Is it some sort of alien manifestation...ala The Thing? (No evidence of this has been implied). Is it a manifestation of her guilt and just her imagination (Which throws her character under the bus and doesn't explain all the blood that shows up in the house).

This is the danger with "metaphorical horror." In trying to make a point, you lose the thread of the story. Is it real or is it imagination? Is she to be believed or is she a false narrator? I tend to be sympathetic with the view that a world of men—all with their instincts and neuroses and phobias and fetishes—can be a challenging, even a frightening challenge for women (I've heard and sympathized and emotionally grumbled over too many stories of men in cars keeping silent pace with a lone female walking a street and witnessed the predatory nature of men in all sorts of situations not to be). Perhaps it's a matter of a studio wanting a "wowser" of a third act to sell a movie—I've heard a lot of that, too—but A24 is an art-house studio with a track record of leaving projects alone. No, I think it's a matter of an unreliable writer/director trying to make a point visually that has already been made...and betraying the lead character that sympathy has been built around. 

I mean, even if all the gory manifestations were true, would anyone believe her? Or will they blame her, obsessing, say, on what she was wearing? Or whether the timeline of her story held up. Or, whether, by their reckoning, such a thing could be possible, and so, her story must be false. What about her body language, for God's sake? I've seen too many trials and confirmation hearings to believe otherwise.

And that's a true, more pervasive horror. Nothing metaphorical about it.