Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

Despite a starry cast and Guy Ritchie, an expert when it comes to fast-paced comedic caper films, at the helm, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre has been sitting on the shelf for two years now, and has been kicked around different studios as it looked for distribution.  It almost went straight to streaming, but received a generous last minute theatrical release, albeit a quiet one.  And while the movie is nowhere near as unwatchable as you might expect hearing all that, this is still a big disappointment.

This is a comedic action spy film that keeps the audience intentionally in the dark as to what exactly all the main characters are looking for.  So, it winds up spinning its wheels as it kills time with a lot of unfunny comic banter, and action sequences that are not worth the price of admission.  It even misses out on a great comic opportunity.  Right from the first scene, we learn that the film's hero (played by Jason Statham) suffers from a large number of phobias.  An action hero who is fighting a variety of phobias could actually be quite funny in a comedic thriller, but after this information is delivered to us in exposition, it's never once truly acted upon.  It's quite odd, and makes me wonder if that info was something that was taken out from an earlier draft of the script.

Statham plays the steely Orson Fortune, who is called away from his holiday by British official Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) to track down a stolen briefcase.  Nobody knows what it is, who stole it, or who wants it.  They just know it's important, and a lot of very bad people want it.  Again, this is all the information the movie supplies for us for most of its two hour running time  By the time it's finally revealed, we have long lost interest.  All we know is that Fortune, along with fellow spy J.J. (Bugzy Malone) and master computer hacker Sara (Aubrey Plaza) have to track it down, and stop a billionaire named George Simonds (Hugh Grant) from getting his hands on it.

To infiltrate Simonds' inner operation, the group of spies blackmail one of George's favorite celebrities, a vain movie star named Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) into joining up with them.  This immediately brought to mind last year's The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which found Nicholas Cage playing a caricature of himself as he is wrapped up in a hostage plot, and having to infiltrate a criminal fan's world.  Unfortunately, this movie is nowhere near the level of wit and intelligence as Cage's film, and it's simply not fun here.  And because the object everyone is looking for is kept a mystery for so long, there's little suspense to be found, and scenes go on too long with little payoff.  

The strong cast that Operation Fortune has gathered seem to be tethered to the lame script provided by Ritchie and his fellow writers.  I wanted to see these people really dig into the material and have fun, but there is just such a lifeless quality to them and the entire film.  There is none of the rapid pacing or dialogue from Ritchie's other works, and little of the visual flare he can sometimes bring.  The characters simply seem to walk into fight and action scenes with little provocation, and many are truncated or are simply not memorable to begin with.  There is simply a generic quality here, with a lead hero who is never once in over his head or in real danger, and never a sense of the stakes being raised.  If the comedic dialogue had been worthwhile, it might have livened the material, but that's a dud as well.

This is simply a movie that exists.  It plays out, leaves as little as impression as possible, and it only got made because everyone involved got paid.  We, the audience, get to simply sit in the dark, watch it unfold in a slow and uninteresting manner, and go home.  Not exactly worth the price of admission, if you ask me.

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