I was bothered by the title of this movie. It’s hard to say, hard to remember, and I think I referred to it as “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” (a film from 20 years ago). And there was also a two-day period where I thought this was going to be an origin story for “The Kingsman” series or Ritchie’s recent movie (and TV series) “The Gentleman.” The day before the screening, I saw it was based on the true operation Churchill and Ian Fleming (yes, the James Bond writer) had to attack the Nazis.
The opening scene has Nazis harassing a boat of supposed fishermen. It reminded me so much of the terrific opening of “Inglourious Basterds.” And when I kept hearing the Spaghetti Western score, I thought – this is easily going to be Quentin Tarantino’s favorite movie of the year (and he’ll get to see one of his actors from that movie, Til Schweiger, playing the bad guy here).
Ritchie wrote and directed, and Jerry Bruckheimer produced it. That means you’re getting an action picture with a lot of humor.
A ragtag group of prisoners are recruited for an impossible mission at a port where the Nazis are holed up, that’s in international waters or some such thing.
Henry Golding is unrecognizable as Freddy Alvarez, an explosives expert. Henry Cavill is Gus March-Phillipps, a soldier who plays by his own set of rules. The cast also includes Alex Pettyfer as Geoffrey Appleyard, Alan Ritchson (Reacher) as Anders Lassen, who uses a variety of weapons on Nazis and seems to relish bloodiness (and instead of collecting scalps, he likes hearts). There’s Rory Kinnear (unfortunately having to follow Gary Oldman), as Winston Churchhill. Eiza Gonzalez plays Marjorie Stewart, who is brought in to “seduce” one of the high ranking officials (I’m guessing some won’t like that that’s what her job is, but she’s not just a pretty face that can sing “Mack the Knife” but is good with a gun).
Cary Elwes is a great actor, but so often when he says his lines, I think of “The Princess Bride.”
My wife had fun with the movie, but thought it was a bit violent. I had fun with it, but felt it wasn’t all that deep. It was a serviceable action flick that tried a bit too hard to have characters act super cool.
The jazzy score was perfect, and it was smart not to make the plot overly complicated. This was just a fun, action war picture, much like “The Dirty Dozen” and similar films from back in the day. Not everything needs to be an Oscar contender.
3 stars out of 5.