If there was an award at next year’s Academy Awards for one of the worst named films of the year, I feel confident that Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, directed by Guy Ritchie, would win in a landslide victory. It’s a shame because the film is actually surprisingly well done. I came into this film with very little expectations just hoping to see fun, mindless action. What I got was an actual interesting story, with cool characters that I cared about and really awesome set piece locations. I couldn’t believe the way I felt about it when I came out of the nearly empty theater at 6:30pm on a Friday.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre follows Orson Fortune, a government spy contractor as he and his team try to recover “The Handle”, a mysterious object of immense wealth, which itself was stolen from the government days prior. Fortune’s team consists of handler Nathan Jasmine, played by Cary Elwes, Sarah Fidel, the hacker played by Aubrey Plaza, Field Operative J.J., played by Bugzy Malone, and Actor Danny Francesco, played by Josh Hartnett. We see this team travel to numerous locations across the globe trying to recover “The Handle” before it gets lost forever or moves into the wrong hands.
I was really rather impressed with how good and interesting the characters were in the movie. Fortune is basically just Jason Statham in every single movie he’s in, and he shows it on screen with his jokes and combat skills. Aubrey Plaza’s Sarah was exceptionally fun to watch, and especially her scenes opposite Josh Hartnett were some of the bests in the film. They had a great chemistry, and their characters made the middle third of the film still really fun to watch. Even Hugh Grant as Billionaire criminal Greg Simmonds was pretty great to watch on screen. The characters seemed to rise above the nature of the film, and I would actually come back to see a sequel if we could watch them again. I do wish they had spent more time developing some of the other characters, like J.J., as he was interesting but felt he took a bit of a backseat to some of the other characters.
The movie unfortunately suffers from a pacing problem, especially in the first half hour of the film. Operation Fortune kicks off immediately at 100 and doesn’t allow for any sort of ramp up time in the story. By the time we are just starting to figure out what’s going on, they’ve already formed the team, name dropped everyone, and jumped right into the first mission. It happens so dizzyingly fast I was concerned for how the rest of the film would play out. Luckily, they really roped in the pace, and I actually began to get connected with the narrative.
I also really appreciated that with this standard action film, they decided to take risks to elevate the film above just your run of the mill action flick. The movie easily could have been a half hour shorter, and it would have wrapped up nicely. However, the final twist and the last act actually helped the film tremendously and I was happy they decided to bring the story in the way they did. Guy Ritchie took risks with this script, and it became a more memorable film because of it, and I truly felt that instead of setting out to make money with another cookie cutter action film, they wanted to tell a compelling story within the action and it paid off.
Obviously, this wouldn’t be a Jason Statham movie without the action and the fight scenes. Luckily, this film handles those sequences really well, and we even get some fantastic set piece chase scenes both on foot and in vehicles. Pair that with some fantastic heist sequences and really well-done combat choreography, and I was left thoroughly entertained. My biggest gripe with this was that the sound design in these scenes were not impressive at all. Every punch, kick, gunshot and explosion were so loud it felt like I was getting hit in the head with a bat every time I heard one. The rest of the movie sounded fine so it seemed they wanted to “enhance” the action but it didn’t work in their favor.
Final Thoughts
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, while unfortunately named, actually left me feeling impressed when I left the theater. In what has been a lackluster start to 2023 in terms of film quality, I was happy to see something that left me feeling good. Jason Statham, Cary Elwes and Aubrey Plaza impressed me the most, and I do hope Guy Ritchie decides to bring back Orson Fortune for another adventure, as I really enjoyed this one. I would recommend seeing it in theaters if only for the spectacle, but when it arrives on streaming it will certainly be on my re-watch list.
