Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is an action-comedy directed by master of action-comedies Guy Ritchie (or so I thought).
The British government hires two competing teams of external contractors to retrieve a stolen device that is given the codename “The Handle”, as no-one really knows what it is for two thirds of the movie. The important thing is that it is important and dangerous enough for the Ukrainian mob to sell it to an unknown buyer for billions of dollars with the help of the internationally infamous arms broker Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). We follow the team of Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) and his preferred specialist spy guy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham), as they spy, punch and over-enunciate their way through a boring plot of world domination conceived by two Silicon Valley crypto-bro-villains.
Guy Ritchie is known for his fast-paced, dialogue-heavy movies which are most and foremost fun to watch. Imagine my surprise when the movie unfolded into a long and slow slog, desperately trying to emulate Mission: Impossible and James Bond at the same time. Despite all the fun genre conventions of a high-end spy movie being present, the movie never picks up speed as we see our bland heroes hopping from one international location to another. There is no conflict to speak of, as we don’t know the stakes for a big chunk of the movie, and after the nature of “The Handle” is finally revealed, nothing really happens.
Mike, the leader of the other team, is the main antagonist of the movie, but it’s never revealed why everyone hates him so much, ostensibly making this the smoothest spy mission I’ve ever seen on screen. Our protagonists win every fight, infiltrate many a high security facility without incident or tension, then hit a tiny snag at the end of the second act that is immediately resolved and then … win, I guess.
With no conflict, stakes or character development to speak of, nothing really stands out, which makes the bad acting even more visible. Every actor in this movie, even the good ones, over-enunciates every word of the extremely boring dialogue to a point where I thought that there must be a joke somewhere – that a punchline will certainly reveal itself along the line. Unfortunately, there are very few punchlines in a supposedly funny movie about punching. The only saving grace for this particular ensemble turned out to be Hugh Grant, who, while looking like a sun-burned prune, exuded more charisma then in Notting Hill and Love, Actually combined.
Judging by the way the movie kept setting up Orson Fortune as a quirky guy that punches well, and by the ending of the movie, it seems like a feeble attempt to set up some kind of franchise á la Benoit Blanc, sans the good writing or acting. Looking at the numbers, this will fortunately never happen. It feels like Guy Ritchie dropped the ball on this one, foregoing his fast-paced convoluted plot-lines for a very simplified version of Mission: Impossible. Shame.