Guy Ritchie’s most recent film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, was met with mixed reviews, but I had a blast watching the movie! I thought it was great and offered some wild fun.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Ritchson talked about his experience working with Ritchie and how particular he was about the details. He explains how the director makes “sure that everything’s got the look that he wants.”
Ritchson plays Anders Lassen in the film and explains how he personally got himself into the character, saying: “I’m just glad that I worked at the character, the dialect, and the script so much before getting to set so I can understand the character, learning archery before coming out, so that was all in place because what we ended up shooting on the day is all completely new.”
Once Ritchson got on the set Ritchie told him to “throw out the script” and improv for the majority of filming. This was after the actor had memorized the entire script.
He also explained, “I learned every line with a dialect coach, and then I come in and Guy’s like, ‘Forget about that. We’re not shooting that movie. The real movie’s going to be the one we find on set.’“
He went on to say how that experience was horrifying for him. Ritchson felt a lot of pressure portraying his character, who was a decorated Danish soldier and real-life war hero. He especially worked hard at training with the bow and arrow, as Lassen “was the first to campaign to make the bow and arrow an official weapon of war, and got it done.”
Ritchson then went on to talk about the action of the film and how he wanted to make it more brutal and violent than Ritchie originally intended.
The actor said: “I realized once we got there that there wasn’t really a plan for the action. But it’s a war movie, and we’re going into these enemy encampments and slaughtering Nazis, and I read four books about my character before we got there, and this man hated Nazis.”
Ritchson continued: “He put all his physical energy into stopping this movement, and so he was inventive and creative, and he was sinister in the way that he would go about doing it. And he was cunning. And as there was really no plan for the action — I felt like we were missing that and needed to see that on screen.”
So, Ritchson approached Ritchie about this and ended up getting into a “creative argument” with the filmmaker! It was a bold move as he fought to make the movie more violent.
He shared that experience saying: “I told Guy, ‘Look, man, if we’re going to do this action sequence tomorrow, I don’t think it could be something where we just throw a dagger and dispense a couple guys. This guy hates Nazis, so this should be murder; this should be malice-filled.’”
Ritchson went on to say: “‘He came from Danish aristocracy, half his family sided with the Nazis and half his family did not sympathize, and so there was a civil war in his own family. They were killing cousins and brothers. That really left a scar on this family, so when he survived and fought back against this movement, it was very personal.'”
He added: “So I was pitching this idea that this should feel incredibly personal when he goes to kill these Nazis. There’s real bloodlust there.”
When talking about Guy’s initial reaction to that, he said: “Guy looked at me like I was nuts. And he was like, ‘I don’t know, man.'”
So, Ritchson and his stuntman Ryan Tarran worked all day and night to come up wiuth a “brutal” sequence to show Ritchie the next day. “Guy walked onto the set and he was like, ‘Where do I sit to see this?’ He was almost angry about it. He was like, ‘Show me.'”
The action sequence follows Anders in hand-to-hand combat, making his way through the inner hallways of a ship and taking down the many hordes of Nazis in his path.
Ritchson recalls after showing it to him: “And Guy loved it. He was like, ‘Great, love it, shoot it. Have fun.’ And he leaves. We then spent all day making what we had pitched, and it’s in the movie and it’s in the trailer. When you think of the action of this movie, that’s what you think of, that scene.”
He continued: “It’s hyper-aggressive, but it’s action-filled with a different kind of purpose than a lot of the action movies we get. I don’t think there’s a greater motivation than what Anders Lassen was fighting for.”
The actor went on to talk about the confidence he gained from making this movie and convincing Ritchie change things about his movie.
He said: “This is still what I was born to do — I can actually get into a creative argument with Guy and go, ‘Dude, I think you’re wrong about this. Let me tell you why I think we should do this,’ and convince him to give something a shot that ends up in the movie and ends up adding value.”
He concluded: “I’ve fought these fights with the best filmmakers in the world now and come out the other side better for it. It’s not that I’ll never be nervous again, but if I can do that and I can work in that environment under those conditions, there’s nothing I can’t do. This was life-changing for me, really seriously, in a big way.”
In the end, I think the movie was better for the crazy insane action that was in it!