Action comedy
Direction:
Guy Ritchie
Actors:
Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Hugh Grant, Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes, Bugzy Malone
Premiere date:
6 January 2023
Age limit:
15 years
«Star director Guy Ritchie has lost it.»
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In recent years, however, the quality of Ritchie’s stories has ended up miles away from the cult films “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels”, which made him famous. Now he is out with a new blockbuster, and the ring fox has completely run out of ideas. An overly thin script with a flood of clichés makes “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” another film about a gang that saves the world from collapsing. It doesn’t get more American.
Medicated with expensive wine
Ritchie has cast Jason Statham, his most trusted actor, in the lead role. Statham is Orson Fortune, a British super agent with luxury habits that only the very richest of us can afford. He has to be “medicated” with expensive wine to escape the trauma, “rehabilitated” in the Maldives after each mission, and transported in a private jet because he is supposedly afraid of driving. Orson costs the intelligence service a fortune, but he is also their best man to keep the British safe.
A research project, simply called “The Tool”, is stolen from a heavily guarded laboratory. No one knows what this “Tool” does, or who has taken it, but when world peace feels threatened, a reluctant Orson must be recalled from his so-called rehabilitation. On the team he has the IT technician Sarah (Aubrey Plaza), the soldier JJ (Bugzy Mallone) and Nathan (Cary Elvwes), who leads the operation itself.
The tracks lead the ensemble to eccentric arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). Simmonds is a great admirer of movie star Danny Francesco played by Josh Hartnett, and nothing would have been better than having him as a friend. Orson and co therefore push Francesco to play his biggest role ever; to be a human Trojan horse so the agents can get closer to Simmonds to find “The Tool”.
Hypnotic
A surprise
For a long time, Ritchie was good at following a dramaturgy with surprises in store, often led by original characters. In “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” there are few surprises, no memorable characters and a story full of genre clichés. The cutting back and forth in time has always been Ritchie’s trademark, and the few times you see it here, it feels completely unnecessary. The only thing that is surprising is the incredible lack of scantily clad ladies. With that, the cliché list had been filled.
Jason Statham plays as he always has; with icy “one-liners” so he appears parodically harmless. Hugh Grant is probably the only character who adds real conversational humor to the film, but the bromance between him and Hartnett doesn’t run so deep that you really like him either. Otherwise, the rest of the role gallery is excessively caricatured, and it becomes a little too easy to distinguish between the bad and the kind.
Hmmm….
Fortunately, the action direction is better than the remaining content of the film. Statham’s stone face works well with hard-hitting fists, and together with the gang he races away at pure “Fast and Furious” pace.
Nevertheless – it is questionable whether one can bear to watch a film of which there are already many on Netflix. Because even Guy Ritchie fans will feel cheated, and it is permissible to feel that the director was possibly a “two hit wonder”. Or you can ask that he locks himself in a room, and is not allowed to come out until he has managed to hatch a proper story. Because this was tame!
