So my granddaughter Jess sent me this ranking of Guy Ritchie's war movies the other day, because she knows I have opinions about Ritchie even though he's a bit outside my usual lane of phones and smart locks. But my dirty little secret is that I love a good war movie, and I've been watching them since before Jess's parents were born. Collider put together a full ranking of every war film Ritchie has made, and I spent a very pleasant evening arguing with it in my head.

If you only know Ritchie from his snappy British crime films, his war output is a funny mix. He doesn't do the slow, brooding, three-hour epics. His war movies move fast, crack jokes and look gorgeous while doing it. Sometimes that works beautifully. Sometimes it's like watching someone tell a joke during a eulogy.

According to Collider's list the crown goes to The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare from 2024. I'll admit this one grew on me. It's based on the real story of a secret British unit in World War II, and it's pure Ritchie, all swaggering characters and impossible missions. Henry Cavill clearly had the time of his life making it. Is it historically loose? Honey, it's historically doing cartwheels. But it's fun, and it knows what it is.

The Covenant lands near the top too, and this is the one I'd push to the very top if the list were mine. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sergeant who goes back to Afghanistan to honor a debt to his interpreter, and it's the most sincere thing Ritchie has ever made. No winking at the camera. Just a man keeping a promise. I remember recommending it to my son-in-law, a man who falls asleep during most action movies, and he stayed awake for the entire thing. That's a five-star review in our family.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. sits in the upper half as well. Technically it's a Cold War spy picture rather than a battlefield film, but Collider counts it so I will too. Napoleon Solo remains one of Ritchie's most charming creations, and the whole thing has the tailor-made suits and easy confidence of a different era of filmmaking. It bombed at the box office in 2015 and everyone spent years asking for a sequel that never came. Hollywood does love doing that to us.

Further down the list you find the ones that didn't quite land. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre gets dinged, and fairly I think. It has its moments, mostly thanks to Aubrey Plaza clearly enjoying herself, but it feels like a Ritchie impression of a Ritchie movie. And his earlier efforts rank lower for reasons that will surprise nobody who's sat through them: thin stories dressed up in very expensive clothing.

What strikes me about the whole exercise is how much Ritchie's career mirrors tech, in a way. He had his scrappy early hits, his bloated middle period, and then a late-career reinvention where he figured out exactly what people want from him. The Covenant proved he could do sincerity. Ministry proved the swagger still sells when the material supports it.

If you're planning a weekend viewing, my advice is the same as it always is: don't try to watch the whole ranked list just because it exists. Pick one. If you want fun, watch Ministry. If you want something that'll stick with you on Monday morning, watch The Covenant. And if you watch U.N.C.L.E. and end up sad about the sequel we never got, well, I warned you...