We Have a Contender
You know what? Just go watch ‘The Gentlemen’ again.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
Director: Guy Ritchie • Writers: Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies, Guy Ritchie
Starring: Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes, Hugh Grant, Bugzy Malone, Peter Ferdinando, Lourdes Faberes, Max Beesley, Eddie Marsan
USA • 1hr 54mins
Opens Hong Kong January 5 • IIB
Grade: C
In Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, special ops (I think), erm, operator Orson Fortune (Jason Statham, retaining his shirt for the entire runtime) is summoned by his shady government handler Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) and assigned a globe-trotting task retrieving a mysterious item stolen from a… tech lab?… in Odessa, enigmatically dubbed The Handle. Jasmine doesn’t know what it is, neither does his even shadier actual government client, Knighton (Eddie Marsan), but they both know it can’t be sold to any of the random world domination-obsessed megalomaniacs that populate films like this. So off Orson goes with his new tech support who’s destined to utter the words “I’m in” at some point, Sarah Fidel (Aubrey Plaza, just doing Aubrey Plaza) and… sniper, maybe?… JJ (rapper Bugzy Malone). Naturally, he has competition from rival agent Mike (Peter Ferdinando), who Sarah once worked for, and who Orson’s last tech dude John dumped him for. Seems shadier-still arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant) is brokering the sale of The Handle, and the best way to get to him is by tempting him with a page straight from The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent and his fanboy crush Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett). Cue the double crosses, Ritchie-esque camera flourishes, poetic profanity and creatively choreographed action, right? Fuck, no. It’s more like popping an Ambien and having a nice cup of tea. It’s January 5 and we have a contender for the worst of 2023.
The most action you get
It’s dead obvious that Ritchie’s fifth film with Statham (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Revolver, and Wrath of Man) is another attempt at kick-starting himself a franchise, something that was way wide of the mark with the (not that bad and infinitely superior) King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and didn’t quite catch with The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (fortunately, as it would need to be recast now). Well newsflash: this ain’t it either. The trials and tribulations of its production company, STX Entertainment, and the “Yikes” bad look everyone involved tried to avoid by moving the release date from roughly this time last year, when Ukraine hit the news cycle for having war waged on it by Russia, are hardly Ruse de Guerre’s biggest offences. Those would be the stilted acting, clunky dialogue, disinterested directing (odd for Ritchie), dearth of comedy and blank slate characters (why is JJ even there?). Look, we don’t need Statham to go full Olivier, and he doesn’t even need to stretch to be entertaining, but he spends most of his screen time glowering while posing, gazing into the middle distance. Who knows? Maybe he knew where this was heading. Only Grant, in full late-period dickbag villain Grant mode, manages to carve some kind of personality from the sketch of Simmonds he was handed.
Needs more
About right
Okay, worst of 2023 is a push. Absolutely 100% there will be a shittier movie this year (Super Mario is coming) and Ruse de Guerre isn’t technically inept enough to be truly bad. It’s just aggressively unremarkable. Most of its shortcomings can bafflingly be laid at the feet of Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies’s lazy script – the same crew that penned Wrath of Man and The Gentlemen – which is lush with threads that are pulled out, tugged on and then left to go nowhere. Is Mike a major hurdle or not? Why is the spectre of John raised if it’s never addressed? How can Elwes have so much make-up on and not be nefarious? If you make a point of telling us Sarah used to work for the competition that’s a Chekhov’s bloody CV, and we expect it to mean something.
I know, I know. The script is “upending expectations” and '“playing with the form.” Nah-uh, not this time. It’s simply aimless and half-baked. Yes, The Gentlemen, could also be accused of some screenplay indiscretions. But that had a fun, twisty, story at its core and an engaged cast that was clearly having fun with its weaselly characters. This is not that. Grant makes a couple of one-liners really fly, and there’s a single sequence showing off Ritchie’s signature absurdist violent comedy, but beyond that it’s mostly a low-energy (where are the Statham fisticuffs?) wet match trying to make a spark. At least the Turkish scenery is pretty. — DEK