After suffering through Civil War last week, with its total absence of narrative competence, logic, and any believable humanity, it was strangely refreshing to revisit World War II and its real-life British heroes in two new works of fiction. Too many people don’t realize that the now politically misled and culturally beset UK — which couldn’t even manage to Brexit when its people overwhelmingly voted for it — was a mere 80 years ago the homeland of magnificent men worthy of St. Crispin’s Day. No doubt Henry V’s Shakespearean speech inspired a good number of them — if very few of their present-day successors:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here
And hold their manhood cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon St. Crispin’s Day
The novel, Burma Road, by Brandon Crocker, and Guy Ritchie’s new film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, do justice to the British commandoes of both the Pacific and European theaters of war. Speaking of their successors, Crocker’s protagonist is the grandson of one fictionalized hero who gets inspired by his ancestor’s memoir about the brutal Burma Road campaign. Phoenix, Arizona insurance salesman Clint Bennett returns from his grandfather’s funeral affected by his modest inheritance — Henry Bennett’s unpublished manuscript.
A little less video-game killing with a bit more introspection would have humanized the characters.
The work, via Crocker’s fine writing, describes Henry’s ordeal with the Chindits — the long-range raiding force of the British Army of India — behind Japanese lines in 1943. After several sabotage acts, the Chindits attempted a daring return to India hunted by the Japanese Army. Of the 3,000 officers and men who went into Burma, only 2,182 came back.
Crocker deftly captures both their ordeal and British stiff-upper-lip courage: “Menzies had also been shot in the stomach, but was still alive. He made a short report on what had occurred to Colonel Wheeler, gave the colonel his watch with instructions to send it along to his family, and then requested a lethal dose of morphine, which was granted.” (READ MORE from Lou Aguilar: The Forgotten Art of Cinema)
The increasingly engrossed Clint tells his wife Deborah that publishers had rejected Henry’s manuscript, declaring World War II memoirs a dime a dozen. “A dime a dozen,” Clint says. “It’s got to be a lot more interesting than anything I’ve ever done in my life, or will actually ever do in my life.” Clint’s admission — though of little interest to the screen addicts of his generation today — becomes the main theme of the story, nothing less than the meaning of modern life.
Clint compares his grandfather’s dangerous yet noble experience to his own safe, staid existence. Having read about Henry’s unit taking shelter at an unknown ancient temple deep in the Burmese jungle, Clint obsesses on finding it. Against Deborah’s opposition, he joins an Asian History professor, Paul Milner, on an expedition to the possible site in now Myanmar.
During the long transpacific flight, the two discuss the pros and cons of presentism versus historic immorality. Professor Milner puts it in perspective. “It would take quite a bit of hubris to think that somehow we are created as superior human beings and that we’d have behaved better … We’re more evolved in our thinking today because we’ve built on the experience of those who came before us.” The whole discussion may not be particularly brilliant, but is Algonquin Round Table level compared to anything in Civil War or any other contemporary movie.
In the Myanmarese jungle, Bennett, Milner, and their ex-Thai Special Forces colleague Somchai encounter a less formidable enemy than the Japanese Army yet no less lethal, drug runners and anti-government separatists. After locating the ancient temple, the explorers have to survive their own adventure on the Burma Road. Author Crocker expertly depicts the settings, perils, and actions the men, past and present, must experience to escape alive. Which makes Burma Road a nice book to enjoy in the snake-free comfort of your own environment.
More Second World War heroics inspired by actual history can be viewed in Guy Ritchie’s latest picture, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Ritchie is by now a comforting 30-year master of the screen trade who’s forgotten more than the current crop of filmmaking punks know. He may not make a masterpiece, but he’ll never make a piece of vacuous junk on the level of Civil War. So odds are the movie will be pretty clever a la Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Sherlock Holmes, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Ritchie’s film is a fast comic-book take on a true commando unit, based on the book, Churchill’s Secret Warriors; The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII by Damien Lewis. Winston Churchill himself helped found the Special Operations Executive, a unit of real brass-defying misfits cohered into an effective military force. The movie depicts their attempt to sabotage Germany’s deadly U-2 pipeline by sinking their supply ships off the coast of North Africa.
The cast is uniformly good, led by the always excellent Henry Cavill, who because of Hollywoke imbecility is no longer Superman and won’t be James Bond. The latter fact is a blessing in disguise since Barbara Broccoli and company have no idea what to do with a charming, virile lead, and would kill him off quicker than asexual mope Daniel Craig. But Cavill shone as Napoleon Solo in Ritchie’s underrated The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and does here as team leader Gus March-Phillips. Ironically and entertainingly, Bond creator Ian Fleming is a character in the new film. (READ MORE: Laughter in the Court)
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare could have been a great war picture, but the now requisite lightning pace, violence, and toxic feminism undermine it. A little less video-game killing with a bit more introspection would have humanized the characters. And the forced girl-boss element is especially irritating here because Eiza González does a fine job as the sexy team seductress. Then, as if to make up for this, they make her a better shot than the best marksmen in an army, which is ridiculous. And she of course rescues herself from the villain in a truly pathetic cheat.
It’s still a fun, suspenseful movie which, together with Brandon Crocker’s Burma Road, will reward a return visit to World War II.
