Guy Ritchie is marching to the front with a new… | Little White Lies

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Guy Ritchie is march­ing to the front with a new World War Two thriller

23 Feb 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Several people in traditional clothing conversing on stone steps in a courtyard, with a man in a blue shirt and khaki trousers standing to the side.
Several people in traditional clothing conversing on stone steps in a courtyard, with a man in a blue shirt and khaki trousers standing to the side.
The Min­istry of Ungentle­man­ly War­fare con­cerns a secret black ops team doing the dirty work.

Guy Ritchie last stormed cin­e­mas in the pre-pan­dem­ic world with The Gen­tle­men, a Cock­ney crime caper very much in the writer/director’s sig­na­ture mold. Hav­ing cov­ered that much, where else does he have left to go but to the realm of the ungentlemanly?

That’s exact­ly what he’ll do with Min­istry of Ungentle­man­ly War­fare, a thriller set dur­ing the bul­let-strewn days of World War Two and the next fea­ture on the dock­et for the promi­nent film­mak­er. The Hol­ly­wood Reporter has the exclu­sive that the Jer­ry Bruck­heimer-pro­duced film will com­bine action and espi­onage in the wild-but-true his­tor­i­cal tale of a secret squadron of sol­diers will­ing to do what­ev­er demand­ed of them to win out over the Axis powers.

To gain an edge on his ene­mies, Win­ston Churchill con­vened an off-the-books unit of troop­ers made up of crim­i­nals and oth­er né’er-do-wells – a sui­cide squad, one might say – who could do seri­ous dam­age on the Euro­pean and African fronts. We don’t yet know the specifics of what exact­ly falls under the umbrel­la of Ungentle­man­ly War­fare, a term that could be applied to eye-pok­ing and kicks in the groin as eas­i­ly as gross crimes against humanity.

The cast list has yet to be set, but the non­fic­tion book from which the script will be adapt­ed includ­ed a high rate of turnover in this excep­tion­al­ly lethal pro­fes­sion, so a rotat­ing ensem­ble could very well be the move. This prop­er­ty has been kick­ing around Para­mount since 2015 with three dif­fer­ent scripts drawn up and unused, but the pair­ing of Ritchie’s cachet with anoth­er Sui­cide Squad movie com­ing down the pike seems to be enough to score a green light.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter describes the film as part Dirty Dozen, part Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds”, which seems redun­dant, but gives a fair impres­sion of the no-holds-barred vio­lence this project promis­es. This ain’t your father’s war pic­ture, of stiff­ened upper lips and solemn let­ters mailed back to sweet­hearts wait­ing at home; this film treats World War Two as a street fight with­out rules or hon­or, in which win­ner take all.

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