' THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE ' : FILM REVIEW

Perfectly OK at 30,000 feet. Guy Ritchie's latest film is familiar and repetitive but fine for your next flight.

I travel by air every couple of months, and always think about a single, burning question : What makes for a great airplane movie?

NOT movies about being on planes. Movies to be watched on planes, making bearable the three or nine hours spent in a tin can, squashed on all sides, munching tiny pretzels and trying not to order yet another gin and tonic.

'' The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,'' the latest offering from the director Guy Ritchie, is a perfect airplane movie. That is not a compliment, but it is not exactly a dis.

Some movies shouldn't be watched on planes - slow artful dramas, or movies that demand concentration and good sound. [ Please do not watch '' The Zone of Interest '' on your next flight.] 

But you've got to watch something, and for that, we have movies like this one.

Ritchie didn't always make airplane movies. His early work, frenetic and ribald and hilarious movies like '' Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels '' and '' Snatch, '' begged to be watched in a room full of roaring audience members, or at least at home over pizza and drinks with your friends.

In more recent films like ''Guy Ritchie's The Covenant,'' he's veered darker and more serious, the sort of thing that might make a flight even more tense.

But watching '' The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, '' which applies a frivolous touch to a serious matter [ that is, defeating Nazis ], I realized embodied some important principles for airplane movies.

'' The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare '' is a fictionalized account of a real thing that was only recently discovered.

During World War II, in an effort to cripple German U-boats in the North Atlantic and also open the way for the Americans to join the war, Winston Churchill maybe-sorta-unofficially authorized a rogue band of daredevils to execute a delicate operation : Cut off resources to the Germans, by sinking their supply ships.

'' The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare '' rips through the story in two hours flat, which increases the chances you'll actually get to see the ending before the plane lands. But if you don't, no worries.You basically know what happens.

The World Students Society thanks Alissa Wilkinson.