A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Saturday, June 6, 2026

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Guy Ritchie, 2024)

Alan Ritchson and Henry Cavill in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Cast: Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Eiza González, Babs Olusanmokun, Cary Elwes, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Henry Golding, Rory Kinnear, Til Schweiger, Freddie Fox, Henry Zaga, Danny Sapani. Screenplay: Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Arash Amel, Guy Ritchie, based on a book by Damien Lewis. Cinematography: Ed Wild. Production design: Martyn John. Film editing: James Herbert. Music: Christopher Benstead. 

If Henry Cavill isn't cast as the next James Bond it may be because he's already played the role: His character in Guy Ritchie's The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is based on the World War II special ops agent who was one of the models for Ian Fleming's character. Fleming himself appears in Ritchie's movie, played by Freddie Fox. Unfortunately, that bit of borrowed glamour is the most interesting thing about the film, which is routine war action stuff, a caricature of the actual Operation Postmaster in 1942. Cavill's Gus March-Phillips heads a team of misfits with nothing to lose in an attempt to destroy a ship supplying the German U-boats that have been prowling the Atlantic. The danger of the mission is reinforced by domestic politics that threatens to undermine the plan, which has the support of Winston Churchill (a miscast Rory Kinnear) but not that of his political rivals. It's a movie loaded with war movie clichés: the sultry spy (Eiza Gonzàlez), the nasty Nazi (Til Schweiger), the marksman who never misses (Alan Ritchson), the last minute need for a Plan B. You've seen it all done better. 

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