Never Underestimate The Predictability Of Stupidity
My Thoughts on Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a film that wants to come across as a semi-spoof of massively overcalled espionage epics as the James Bond films and the Mission: Impossible franchise. This sounds like a perfectly acceptable concept on the surface—even though the Bond and M:I films are not exactly shy about the tongue-in-cheek attitudes towards themselves that they have employed over the years. The problem is that in this particular case, director/co-writer Guy Ritchie obviously recognizes the elements of those predecessors that most warrant a skewering, but seems to have no idea as to what it is in particular that he want to say about them nor does he possess any kind of discernible comedic approach to the material the makers of those original franchises have already come up with on their own. The result is an entirely too self-satisfied would-be genre romp that makes the 1967 version of Casino Royale seem focused and delightfully droll by comparison. After watching it, I couldn’t decide what was more troubling—the fact that I once found Ritchie to be a fresh and innovative filmmaking voice (based on the strength of his first two feature, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch) or the fact that his misbegotten 2002 remake of Swept Away, the 2002 vanity project that got away from him that used to be considered one of the worst movies ever made in the history of the art form of cinema, would probably land only somewhere in the middle if one were to do a qualitative ranking of his filmography to date.
Teaming up with Ritchie for the fifth time, Jason Statham stars as Orson Fortune, a private contractor who is the biggest, baddest and best guy in his rarefied field—the film informs us of this pretty much right from the get-go (then again, I suspect there are very few beta types out there willing to even attempt to try to pull off a name like “Orson Fortune”) and then reminds us of this whenever things begin to sag—and is without peer in everything from hand-to-hand combat to the perks he is able to negotiate in exchange for his services. Here, he is recruited by British agent Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) to assist in a little matter of global importance—find and retrieve a briefcase stolen from a top secret facility in Odessa. This is a bit tricky because they have no idea what was in the case, who stole it in the first place or to whom it is going.
At first, Fortune and his team—genial fellow mercenary J.J. Davies (Bugzy Malone) and American tech expert Sara Fidel (Aubrey Plaza)—are unable to answer those questions either but they do manage to figure out that the identity of the deal’s middle-man is none other than billionaire arms dealer George Simonds (Hugh Grant), who stands to make an enormous amount of money for his small part in the deal. Figuring that the best path to their target is through Simonds, the team heads off to quietly crash a super-exclusive charity party hat he is hosting on his yacht in the French Riviera. Before arriving, they make a quick stop in Los Angeles in order to pick up their invitation in the form of Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), a movie star that Simonds is a huge fan of who gets dragooned into the effort after they present him with some dirt they’ve uncovered on him. While the movie star and Fidel, posing as his girlfriend, distract Simonds over a weekend at his manor, Fortune tries to uncover who is behind it all while at the same time fending off a rival group of mercenaries who are after the same things as he is.
As I said, Operation Fortune has the basic form of a spoof of over-the-top action spectacles at first glance but before too long, you get the sense that Ritchie is more interested in merely imitating that type of filmmaking than in mining it for satirical content. Take the attitude that it has towards its central character, Fortune. Ritchie spends so much time establishing Fortune’s unshakable bonafides as the ultimate gentleman spy for our time that I assumed that it was being used to set up a kidding commentary on the genre’s tendency to portray their heroes in seemingly invincible terms, despite the fact that doing so tends to rob their stories of any potential suspense. Unfortunately, this is one aspect that Ritchie wants us to take all too seriously and it helps undercut whatever comedic tone he might have hoped to establish—a move that is all the more mystifying since Statham has demonstrated a cheerful willingness to goof on his macho man persona in a number of his past films that is sorely lacking here. The result is a film that offers up little more than the sight of a group of highly paid actors gadding about in fancy outfits amidst super-luxurious surroundings while blowing things up and occasionally offering up some kind of self-aware wisecrack to let us know that they are in on the joke. However, whatever good times that the cast and crew may have had while producing the film have not translated to the audience, who may at times feel as if they are trapped watching super-elaborate vacation videos belonging to other people.
With his legitimate comedic gifts mostly sidelined here and his physical gifts in typical, if hardly surprising form—he remains one of the few actions stars of late who actually seem capable of delivering some of the carnage depicted—the most notable aspect of Statham’s presence here is his evident loyalty towards Ritchie, who gave him his first acting job in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and who he has continued to work with over the years despite his own ascendancy in the industry and the lameness of the offered material. At least he tries a little, which is more than can be said of Plaza, the wild card of the cast and perhaps the most disappointing aspect in a film filled with such things. Plaza is, of course, a singularly hilarious presence in most things that she is in and she has also demonstrated legitimate acting chops as well in such offbeat projects as Black Bear and Emily the Criminal. The difference is that in those films, she was given relatively complex and thought-out characters to play and rose to the occasions accordingly.
Here, from virtually the moment that her character enters the fray, it is evident that Ritchie and his co-writers never had a clear idea of who Fidel is supposed to be. At various times, she is presented as a straightforward tech nerd, a knowing cynic with a ready supply of snark on hand and a more-than-capable action babe who can kick ass and look fabulous while doing it but instead of trying to figure out a way of making these various approaches coalesce into a single convincing character, it has her flit from one persona to the next in practically every scene with the only thing they truly share is Plaza’s fairly obvious refusal to commit to any of the nonsense she is working with here. As for Hartnett, he is undeniably well cast as the vain movie star pressed into world-saving duty but he is hampered by the fact that his character never really seems to be an integral part of the proceedings at any point, even when he finds himself in the middle of a deadly car chase while driving the exact same car he used in one of his big action blockbusters.
Amid the smug attitudes, listless action sequences and tiresome formal gambits that have pretty much become synonymous with the Guy Ritchie oeuvre of late, the one positive aspect of Operation Fortune that stands out in a reasonably positive manner is the appearance by Hugh Grant. Seemingly quite comfortable at having eased out of the shyly stammering rom-com leads that defined his career for a while, he continues his transition to character actor here and the few sparks of life that the film manages to generate are almost exclusively due to him. Among the cast, he seems to be the only person who recognizes the project to be little more than a barely-working vacation, but he is nevertheless still willing to do more than simply go through the motions.
He plays Simonds as a cheerfully amoral goof—the kind of person who has made billions helping to sell death to the world but who is nevertheless genuinely agog at being in the presence of a real movie star—and while the performance will not rate highly in many Lifetime Achievement highlight reels, he does inject the part with a bit of actual fun, especially in the way he seems to be riffing on the gangster-style roles than Michael Caine has occasionally dabbled in throughout his career. His efforts do not remotely begin to save Operation Fortune from its terminal pointlessness but at least when he is on the screen, it becomes at least slightly easier to pretend that you are actually being entertained.