With Reacher over, the WWII flop where Alan Ritchson plays a Hawkeye-style archer has taken over Netflix
Guy Ritchie’s WWII caper, a box office disappointment in April 2024, has climbed past Puss in Boots: The Last Wish in Netflix’s US film chart.
If you missed The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare in cinemas – and to be fair, judging from the box office, most people did – Netflix is suddenly making it impossible to ignore. Alan Ritchson, fresh off all that Reacher muscle-flexing, stars in this rollicking WWII caper that’s just stormed Netflix’s top movie list in the US, sailing past some proper big-budget competition.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare surged to third place on Netflix’s latest US movie rankings, overtaking films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Shark Tale.
Streaming Surprise
According to the ever-obsessed folks at FlixPatrol, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is currently sitting pretty at number three on Netflix’s movie charts in the States. For context, it’s proving more popular this week than not only some family favourites ('Puss in Boots: The Last Wish', 'Shark Tale'), but also other recent thrillers and original content. Bit of a surprise, given how the film went under the radar back in April 2024 when it first hit US cinemas.
Archery and Outrageousness
Alan Ritchson’s character, Anders Lassen, brings a distinctively hands-on approach to warfare – and not how you’d expect. Yes, bows and arrows get serious screen time (not something you see every day in a WWII film), but Lassen doesn’t exactly stop there. Axes, knives, pistols – basically, anything sharp or shootable, he’s in. The real Lassen was apparently a dead shot with a bow, so there’s a sliver of truth buried under all the cinematic bravado.
Director Guy Ritchie takes the whole thing and cranks the swagger up to eleven. It’s a team-up story set in wartime, led by Henry Cavill as Gus March-Phillipps, with Eiza González, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, and Ritchson rounding out the impressively chiselled squad of misfits. The plot? A handful of rule-breakers embark on a top-secret mission to poke Nazi forces where it hurts, supposedly inspired by the actual Special Operations Executive. If that sounds a bit over-the-top, that’s precisely the point.
- The film hit US cinemas on 19 April 2024
- Production budget: roughly $60 million
- Worldwide box office: a rather underwhelming $29.8 million
- Rotten Tomatoes: 68% from critics, a much livelier 91% from audiences
- IMDb score: 6.8 out of 10
Reception: Audiences vs. Critics
Most people who’ve watched it on Netflix are actually having a better time than those who paid for a cinema ticket. Audiences rave about the cast’s chemistry (not just Cavill’s moustache), the creative carnage of the fight scenes, and the film’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humour. That said, if you’re looking for a history lesson, this isn’t it: some viewers and reviewers haven’t been shy about pointing out just how much license Ritchie has taken with the facts. Still, no-one is really coming to this for GCSE revision.