After the madcap success of The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie is back with his take on The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Starring Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, the movie—streaming now on Amazon Prime—is a wild and mostly true story set around a ragtag group of spies heading deep into Nazi territory during the grimmest engagements of World War II, hiding in plain sight aboard a Swedish fishing trawler.
Henry Cavill does Henry Cavill things as the lead, Gus March-Phillipps (alleged to be one of the early inspirations for Ian Fleming’s James Bond), alongside Ritchson (a.k.a. Jack Reacher), who plays the biggest man you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s a heady, wise-cracking, globe-trotting spy story that also features some great, era-accurate watches.
Loulou Bontemps, Ritchie’s favourite costume designer who was responsible for the stellar watches in The Gentlemen, spent a long time researching the period Ungentlemanly is set in to ensure both the outfits and accompanying watches were up to scratch, and she drew particular inspiration from the ‘Dirty Dozen’—a series of 12 Swiss field watches commissioned by the MoD to aid soldiers during WW2. The brief was that the watches needed to be reliable, durable and discreet, with black dials, Arabic numerals and luminous hour markets.
For Cavill’s character, Bontemps settled on two different, vintage iterations of the Dirty Dozen, one by Jaeger-LeCoultre (renowned for its iconic Reverso model) and one by lesser-known brand, Cyma. “Henry is someone with very clear and particular taste,” Bontemps tells us. “He likes to collaborate with the wardrobe process, which is great for me. With Henry being the leader in the film, it was important that he had this powerful watch, so I presented him with a lot of different options. And of course, he chose the most classic and expensive original [the JLC piece]! He just has that kind of great taste, and he really felt it was fitting for his character.”
Look closely and you’ll see Cavill wears the Cyma field watch in the film as well. Bontemps bought these two pieces from Specialist Watches and the rest of the watches in the film were sourced from Alfie’s Antiques and other antique stores and collectors.
