Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
Guy Ritchie’s latest film “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” is oddly dull. The movie stars Jason Statham, Hugh Grant, Aubrey Plaza and Cary Elwes in glamorous international locations like Madrid, Morocco and Cannes during a high-speed chase for a world-ending MacGuffin. But it lacks stakes. Nothing feels at risk here. And the story never coheres or takes shape not as a bunch of caricatures or even as characters. There’s some parody present, but this is not a broad spoof comedy either. It’s just empty.
Jason Statham plays Orson Fortune an operative so legendary that only the British government can hire him for missions of national importance on occasion. Representing said government is Nathan (Cary Elwes), who is tasked with keeping Orson on track because Orson is notoriously unreliable.
Orson has phobias we learn about them before we meet him, which makes his employment with the British government seem unwise at best but he comes off like any other laconic action hero who never seems particularly afraid of anything even though he should be scared less all the time. He gets on multiple planes throughout this movie and sits through long international flights without displaying any signs of being afraid to fly etc.Hence why didn’t they play around with it more?
The mission, should Orson choose to accept it (which he does), involves tracking down a stolen briefcase containing some mystery object that’s about to be sold on the black market arms dealers! drug runners! state secrets! nefarious transactions! nobody knows what’s inside this thing except that it could destroy the world if it falls into wrong hands!
(What’s inside isn’t revealed until midpoint via convenient flashbacks meant to be suspenseful but are only irritating.)To do his job, Orson recruits J.J. Davies (Bugzy Malone), whose main function throughout the movie is to stand around staring at GPS screens and reporting locations, and Sara Fidel (Aubrey Plaza), a computer hacker who can hack into anything. Their first op involves infiltrating an ultra elite party held on billionaire George Simonds’ (Hugh Grant) yacht. He rolls with a very suspicious crew that includes two “biotech” creeps and a gang of drunk thieves who also want the briefcase.
Since there’s no getting invited to this party, the team blackmails an unwitting movie star named Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), hoping he’ll be celebrity catnip for the cagey Simonds. It works. With Danny out front, Orson posing as his manager and Sara posing as his girlfriend, they gain entry to the fiesta. George lights up when he sees Danny! Hugh Grant is inert here, though not altogether unentertaining (his insinuating deadened voice oozing corruption; his flat gray hair; his tinted glasses giving off major Jim Jones/Robert Evans vibes; him coming across like a cooing dead eyed gargoyle).
Jokes are made, lies are told, and near misses are missed. The caper gets further complicated by various other groups of independent contractors all after the briefcase that must be shut down by any means necessary. But what’s most lacking from “Operation Fortune” overall is eccentricity.
Ritchie’s movies tend to be full of weirdos characters with strange vocal patterns and stranger gestures. “Operation Fortune” is peopled by a bunch of generic spies, however. The interactions among the team lack conflict or even much humor. J.J. is nondescript. Sara is supposed to be nerdy and awkward (but only sporadically), the kind of person who tries and fails at jokes, then explains them when no one laughs; she does this multiple times but it never becomes a running bit. For most of the movie Plaza just stares at a computer screen, which feels like a waste of one of the most talented comic actresses working today; Orson is supposed to be phobia-ridden, which could have been fun, but he’s mostly just indistinct. These are all funny actors, but no one gets to be funny.
Except Josh Hartnett. Danny starts as your garden-variety egotistical movie star but slowly becomes a different kind of man over the course of being kidnapped from Hollywood and taken on a yacht in the Mediterranean by three spies. His is the only real character arc in “Operation Fortune,” which every time he’s onscreen because his energy level is higher than that of every other character combined briefly seems as though it might turn into something else entirely. He doesn’t know what’s going on either! And his journey winds its way toward an ending shot through with some welcome cynicism about what it takes now to make people rich and famous in Hollywood (and also how little).
Danny feels like the main character here, in other words except for that unfortunately overlooked part where he isn’t, he’s just a sidekick sitting next to some blah spies staring at computer screens.
Even the occasional sarcastic quip usually so ruthless in Ritchie’s scripts feels warmed over, obligatory: Nobody really pops off here; nobody has any particular point of view. “Operation Fortune” is a caper that doesn’t caper at all.
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