Movie Review – Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre
Principal Cast : Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Carey Elwes, Hugh Grant, Josh Hartnett, Bugzy Malone, Eddie Marsan, Peter Ferdinando, Lourdes Faberes, Max Beesley, Eugenia Kuzmina.
Synopsis: Special agent Orson Fortune and his team of operatives recruit one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars to help them on an undercover mission when the sale of a deadly new weapons technology threatens to disrupt the world order.
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Woof. Smell that? That’s the turgid stink of mediocrity; Guy Ritchie takes a vacation to various coastal Mediterranean getaways to slum it with this off-the-cuff disaster, a hodgepodge of spy-vs-spy espionage inanity masquerading as keeping his favourite actors employed. Ritchie, who for a while now has been absolutely knocking it out of the park with box office successes like The Gentlemen, Wrath of Man, and 2017’s King Arthur, falls over his own ego in this banal, charmless knock-off Bond flick reteaming him with Snatch co-conspirator Jason Statham (again), Hugh Grant (having a renaissance with these kooky comedic turns) and Eddie Marsan, while providing Aubrey Plaza, Carey Elwes and Josh Hartnett some gainful employment. It’s formulaic, dreadfully trite, and utterly bereft of the gleeful adult-centric nature of many of Ritchie’s more recent work: the cumbersomely named Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre is a total misfire.
The film follows elite operative Orson Fortune, played by Jason Statham, as he’s tasked with retrieving a stolen piece of cutting-edge technology that could upend global stability. Fortune teams up with a diverse crew, including tech genius Sarah Fidel (Aubrey Plaza), arms expert JJ Davies (Bugzy Malone), and seasoned handler Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes). Their mission gets more complicated when they enlist the help of eccentric Hollywood movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), who unwittingly becomes key to infiltrating billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds’ (Hugh Grant) inner circle.
In the 1930’s, a film like Operation Fortune would generally be described as “a lark”, a fun piece of nonsense similar in tone to Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 franchise, and capitalise on that popcorn-ready entertainment factor with some well written comedic beats, solid action sequences and some decent, if generic, performances. Sadly, Guy Ritchie’s espionage flick offers very little comedy, some inert and uninterested action sequences, and some uneven and weirdly cringeworthy performances, which is surprising given the lead is Jason Statham and he has the acting range of plywood. Ritchie, who co-writes with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies somehow manages to stumble over even the basics of storytelling and filmmaking here, making what I can only describe as a pastiche of his stock in trade, that is to say any number of cross-cut narrative arcs and stunt sequences, some ironic wit and some effortful violent fight choreography, only without the crisp frisson of fun that usually accompanies his films. It’s a balance that hasn’t worked this time round, unfortunately, although I guess if you’re seeking thoroughly undemanding viewing this will most definitely waste a rainy Sunday afternoon.
The plot is a nonsensical exercise in MacGuffin handling, echoing recent Mission Impossible films with some kind of secretive but super-powerful “thing” everyone’s chasing for their own ends, and there’s a lot of skipping from coastal Mediterranean port city to Turkish valleys to Middle Eastern port cities in the name of breathless plot mechanics. Basic subgenre tropes abound, including a variety of nonsensical AI technobabble and elaborate subterfuge whereby success is measured only by how utterly stupid the Bad Guys are, and let me tell you, in Operation Fortune they’re incredibly stupid. The film’s lack of cohesive setup – dropping is right into the middle of the story without so much as introducing us to the major players in a way that engages the viewer – and stop-and-prop narrative flavourings may have worked in previous Ritchie films, but it hardly fires at all here. It’s as if this plot was somehow an offshoot of The Gentlemen scribbled on a napkin and brought to life with secondary production values. I snark, I do, because Operation Fortune looks a billion dollars despite having the gumption of a film made for a buck fifty. There’s no energy in front of the camera, despite all of Statham’s square-jawed heroics and Aubrey Plaza’s aping of Rebecca Ferguson’s character in Mission Impossible, and what few beats in this mess do land are too far between to make up the difference.
At least the actors have fun, though, right? Josh Hartnett, as a facile Hollywood film star, Hugh Grant as a libertine weapons dealer with a penchant for the lads, and Carey Elwes as Statham’s cowardly handler, all seem to be having a blast chewing the scenery and trying to out-hamm each other in every scene in which they appear. Eddie Marsan phones in another bureaucratic role, British rapper Bugzy Malone (seriously, I cannot take him seriously with that name) plays Fortune’s footman, JJ, and Aubrey Plaza all feel like they’re acting in totally different movies to each other, and Ritchie’s schizophrenic approach to direction – which manifest superbly depending on the material – ambles and stumbles when it should, by rights, clobber the viewer with entertainment. There’s some great set-pieces in this film that never really work, as if the excitement has been sucked out of the material between the page and the screen, and no matter how enthusiastically Ritchie tries to blow shit up or showcase Statham’s kickass combat skills, Operation Fortune seems stuck in first gear.
Far be it for me to malign Guy Ritchie: he’s made more multimillion dollar films than I have, and seems knows what he’s doing more often than not, but this film is a complete mess. What an absolute clunker. The withering action of Wrath Of Man, which would have worked well in giving this film a legitimate sense of threat, is missing. The wry comedy of The Gentlemen is lurking just below the surface of this ill-fitting screenplay but never percolates upwards. The frenzied nonsense of King Arthur or The Man From UNCLE (the film I think Ritchie was most closely trying to emulate here) sputters and burbles with a lack of spark, a lack of cohesive engagement with the viewer, with character beats that never matter (or are never explained) in a way that forces us to care for them. It’s a “going through the motions” action spy flick, something I’m sure Ritchie and Co scripted in an afternoon around a barbeque and put together with money stolen from a studio on the promise he’d deliver another Sherlock Holmes success. If I were you, I’d avoid Operation Fortune – the name implies that this is possibly a setup for a franchise of some kind, but given the lack of traction with this project I’d say it’s dead in the water.
Who wrote this?
