Can you actually make a war movie if you’re Guy Ritchie? I found myself pondering this question longer than I expected. I mean, the man built his reputation on crime comedies dripping with sass, ensemble casts with too many nicknames, and heist stories that fold in on themselves like origami. He’s the director who gave us Brad Pitt eating constantly while being impossible to understand, and Robert Downey Jr. as a feral, genius detective. War, as a genre, doesn’t sit in his wheelhouse.
And yet, here we are. In the last decade or so, Ritchie has kept drifting toward conflict. Sometimes, it’s real; sometimes, war bleeds into a story without ever announcing itself. Some of my picks on this list will seem strange to you. A Cold War spy spree? A fantasy about swords and sorcerers? I know, I know, but hear me out. War doesn’t always come with a uniform and a flag. Sometimes, it’s what shapes every character’s story before the first scene clicks into place. I’ve included entries where war is either the engine or the atmosphere. These are the five Guy Ritchie movies about war, ranked from the one that aged poorly to the one that surprised me with how much it had to say.
5
‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ (2017)
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword opens in the middle of a battle. It drops you directly into a siege on Camelot, with mages hurling power across the walls, and war elephants the size of apartment buildings trampling everything in sight. The opening borrows heavily from Peter Jackson’s visual language and doesn’t apologize for it. King Uther Pendragon (Eric Bana) ends the war between men and mages by jumping on one of those elephants and personally killing the mage king, which is a wild choice. Within minutes, his brother Vortigern (Jude Law) betrays him and seizes the throne. The story of Arthur becomes the narrative.
Guy Ritchie basically gives Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) the energy of a street boss rather than a prince. The movie feels most alive when it plans an insurrection the way you would plan a heist. Yes, the war here is fantastical, as it involves snake women and literal fire demons. However, the political anatomy is recognizable. There is an occupying power, people are taxed and brutalized into submission, and a reluctant figurehead is pushed toward a leadership role that he doesn’t want.
However, the movie falls apart spectacularly in the back half, where the war becomes a video game boss sequence. Ritchie seems to lose the thread he was holding. The editing is frantic, and the final confrontation feels like a different film altogether. The reported three-plus-hour original cut looms over every scene, making you feel like you’re missing something. King Arthur was supposed to launch a franchise, and it’s not hard to see why it didn’t.
4
‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’ (2015)
Some movies only work when everybody in it looks like they’re having the time of their life, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is exactly that movie. Set in 1963 at the absolute white-knuckle peak of the Cold War, it follows CIA agent Napoleon Solo (Henry Cavill) and KGB operative Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer) as they’re forced into an alliance neither wants. The plan is to stop a criminal organization from building a private nuclear weapon. Ritchie himself admitted that the plot is beside the point. You’re supposed to focus on the texture: the Italian coastline, the period-perfect tailoring, the Ennio Morricone nods on the soundtrack, and the satisfaction that comes with watching two men who represent opposing Cold War superpowers bicker like a married couple.
It’s one of the decade’s more stylized movies because of how seriously it takes the stakes. The nuclear threat at the center of the story isn’t abstract. The story is about Nazi sympathizers getting close to mass-producing a warhead. Back in 1963, this wasn’t the premise of a thriller. It was a nightmare waiting to come true. Cavill plays Solo with a Roger Moore looseness, and it suits him more than the brooding he was asked to do as Superman. His chemistry with Hammer’s rigid, rage-suppressing Kuryakin is so funny. Alicia Vikander and Elizabeth Debicki are incredible, too. Overall, the plot resolves a little too easily, and the movie ends right as the dynamic between the leads starts to deepen. While a sequel was never made, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a reminder that Ritchie’s instinct for male chemistry and comedic timing translates just as well to war spycraft as it does to crime.
3
‘Wrath of Man’ (2021)
Nobody talks about Wrath of Man the way they talk about Guy Ritchie’s bigger, louder movies. That’s a shame. It might be the most essential movie in the director’s filmography. The movie surgically removes Ritchie’s signature sense of humor. There are no nicknames, no cheeky callbacks, and no one delivering monologues about the proper way to dispose of a body. The result is a cold and unsettling procedural. Wrath of Man is a revenge flick about a man named H (Jason Statham) as he infiltrates an armored truck security company to hunt down the people who killed his son. The non-linear structure, titled in four chapters, peels the story back into layers.
The war element here is essential and underplayed. The villains — I mean, the crew responsible for the massacre that killed H’s son — are a group of disenfranchised military veterans led by ex-Sergeant Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan) and his subordinate Jan (Scott Eastwood). These are men who deployed, served, came back, and found that the country they fought for had very little waiting for them. They turn to armed robbery because they’re bitter and lethal. Ritchie frames their planning and execution with the language of military operations and never asks you to sympathize with them. However, you understand exactly how they got here.
Statham is free from the obligation of being charming here. He plays H as a terrifying character who is simply moving toward an outcome. Overall, the movie isn’t perfect. The pacing in the first act is slow, and a few of the supporting characters feel underwritten. But the siege scene is a stunning piece of action choreography, staged with the tactical clarity and emotional weight of a story that was always going to reach this point.
2
‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ (2024)
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is the Guy Ritchie war movie that looks like a Guy Ritchie movie the most, and I mean that as a compliment. Loosely based on the real WWII covert operation, Operation Postmaster, it follows a squad of elite British soldiers handpicked by Winston Churchill to disrupt Nazi U-boat supply lines in West Africa. The mission is classified, and the methods, if you can guess, are not particularly ungentlemanly. Henry Cavill plays Gus March-Phillipps, the man Ian Fleming would later draw on for James Bond. His grin alone suggests he finds the whole situation of killing Nazis to be rather enjoyable.
Guy Ritchie does the same thing as movies like The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone: presents us with a classic ensemble war-adventure where the pleasure comes from watching a collection of very capable, very different people execute an impossible plan. Alan Ritchson is a thunderous presence as Anders Larssen, a man who solves problems with his hands and his size. Eiza González brings her intelligence, and Ritchie avoids the trap of making her just decorative by giving her distinct objectives and risks.
Richie also makes it clear early on that the movie is not a documentary; it’s a caper with real stakes. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare falls short of the top spot because the story occasionally outruns its own depth. Characters are vivid and multidimensional without always being properly developed. However, the action is genuinely inventive, the period detail is lush, and a sequence involving a boat raid is very satisfying. Ritchie essentially gives us a movie that knows its audience, knows its genre, and delivers everything it promises.
1
‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’ (2023)
I’ll be honest, I never expected this. The Covenant is not the movie you anticipate from the man who made Snatch. There is no wit here and no Cockney wordplay. Instead, Ritchie made a taut, morally serious movie about the debt the American military owes to the Afghan interpreters who served alongside it. These men have not only risked their lives, but also the lives of their families, to translate, guide, and protect U.S. soldiers, who were left behind when the withdrawal happened. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Sergeant John Kinley, a soldier whose life is saved by his interpreter, Ahmed (Dar Salim), in an act of extraordinary courage. The rest of the story follows Kinley trying, against bureaucratic indifference and active danger, to get Ahmed and his family out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Dar Salim’s performance is the reason you have to watch this movie. It’s one of the finest pieces of screen acting I’ve seen. It’s so still, so contained, and so devastating at the same time. He makes Ahmed’s interior life completely legible without spelling it out, and the movie is wise enough to let the camera stay on him long enough for you to understand that. Of course, Gyllenhaal is also excellent as a man consumed by guilt.
Ritchie directs the action scenes with the kind of conviction and geographical precision he hasn’t always prioritized. You always know where everyone is, what they’re trying to do, and what the cost of failure looks like. But the movie’s heart is in the stretches where two men can barely communicate, and the only thing keeping each other alive is one soldier’s refusal to abandon the man who saved him. The Covenant is an argument that war movies owe it to their subjects to tell an honest story.
What’s your favorite Guy Ritchie movie? The crime classics or the newer ones? Let us know in the comments.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
