Netflix’s Best New Movie Has A 91% Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Lionsgate

This article was published on 9/19 and republished on 9/21.

It’s a collection of actors and a director that couldn’t be hotter right now. What do you get when you combine Guy Ritchie directing Henry Cavill, Alan Ritschon and Eiza González in an action movie? Something that audiences love, according to its Rotten Tomatoes score.

Netflix recently added The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare to its movie catalog, and the film is already No. 2 on its top 10 list. The film did not do particularly well, earning only $29 million globally during its run, but it is finding new life and attention on streaming. While critics rated it an okay 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences loved it, as it has a 91% audience score. The action comedy is based on true events, and here’s part of the synopsis:

“The top-secret combat unit, composed of a motley crew of rogues and mavericks, goes on a daring mission against the Nazis using entirely unconventional and utterly “ungentlemanly” fighting techniques. Ultimately, their audacious approach changed the course of the war and laid the foundation for the British SAS and modern Black Ops warfare.”

The main thing I remember about this film is Alan Ritchson wearing very tiny glasses. This was filmed during one of his Reacher breaks, as he has managed to get a lot of movies in despite starring in that show almost every year. Ritchson also starred in the Netflix original War Machine, and a sequel is reportedly in the works. Ritchson is also supposed to be lining up some sort of non-Batman DCU role, he says.

And no one is more emblematic of DC than Henry Cavill, who played Superman for many years in the DCEU. At first, I confused this movie with another of his, The Man from UNCLE, a spy film. I did see that one, and it’s definitely worth your while. Cavill also has a Netflix connection in playing Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher for three seasons, a role he famously left early, with Liam Hemsworth replacing him.

Eiza González has been in everything from Baby Driver to Godzilla vs. Kong, but yet again, she has another Netflix connection like the last two as a character in 3 Body Problem, which is returning at some point here, though no specific date has been given. Though again, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is not a Netflix original, despite all these links.

Oh wait, I forgot one, director Guy Ritchie is behind Netflix’s The Gentlemen, which just aired its second season and will return for a third. Man, everything connects back to Netflix, huh? Anyway, watch this crowd pleaser over the weekend.

Update (9/21): Checking back in, The Ministry of Ungentlemenly Warfare has now become the #1 movie on Netflix, moving up the list since this was originally written. The poorly reviewed The Seemingly Perfect Family has slid to #2, and newcomer Best of the Best, a new Netflix original dance film starring Never Have I Ever’s Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is at #3. I could see that becoming popular and taking the #1 spot in a few days, given that it’s being well reviewed and debuted pretty high on the chart.

On the rest of the list, The Whisper Man, the Robert De Niro serial killer film, remains at #6, staying in the top 10 list for a good long while. An interesting new addition is The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist. Quite the title. It’s a new documentary exploring the risks and dangers of the quickly-evolving AI space, certainly a relevant topic for present day.

One movie to watch out for in the rest of this month is Unabomber, the story of the famed killer which stars Russell Crowe, Jacob Tremblay, Annabelle Wallis, and Shailene Woodley. No early reviews are in for that yet, but it’s a talented cast and an interesting story, to be sure. As ever, crime stories, both true or fictional, tend to do well on Netflix, and this scripted project is a bit of both.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.