Worth: $10.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jason Statham, Cary Elwes, Aubrey Plaza, Bugzy Malone, Hugh Grant, Josh Hartnett, Eddie Marsan
Intro:
The real ruse will be trying to get people into the cinema …
A Ruse de Guerre, or ruse of war for the non-Francophones, is a stratagem in battle that uses deception as its modus operandi. The most well-known ruse de guerre would be the Trojan Horse, although the ruse has also been used in actual warfare.
In Guy Ritchie’s film Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, the term applies not only to the team who are tasked with an off-the-books mission, but also to the methods they use to complete it. It’s a pretentious title for a movie that barely elevates itself above Ritchie snooze mode, but the title is the least of the worries the audience has to deal with.
The unlikely named Orson Fortune (Jason Statham, doing exactly what you’d expect Statham to do in any movie) runs a covert-ops group. He’s tasked via his handler Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) to get a stolen piece of tech – “something very nasty” – off the market.
Ritchie, with regular co-writers Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, attempt to give Fortune some personality quirks that distinguish him from basically any other role that Statham has played. In this case, it’s Fortune’s habit of spending “company” money on luxuries like wine worth many thousands of dollars and private jets to assuage his “medicinal needs.” There’s a back and forth between Fortune and Jasmine as to who is really benefitting from Fortune’s demands, but like almost all the script, it’s unfunny.
Jasmine needs to organise new members for Fortune’s team, as some of the previous people have gone to work with the competition. Enter Aubrey Plaza as tech genius Sarah Fidel (also the film’s sole saving grace). The other reliable team member is JJ Davies (Bugzy Malone). Together they have to stop the thingamajig (called The Handle) getting into the hands of billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant), who will sell it on to the highest bidder.
The problem is that gaining access to Greg Simmonds is no easy task and the team have to enlist the services of Hollywood movie star, Danny Franscesco (Josh Hartnett) to gain entry to one of Simmonds’ charity events, ironically for war orphans of whom he has made many.
What follows is exhaustingly predictable. There are the usual twists of a Ritchie film, but they can be spotted miles away (if you don’t work out who the buyers of the Handle are early on, it’s probably because you’ve rightly decided to take a nap). Ritchie tries to keep the dialogue witty and snappy but so much of it is just crass and cringeworthy. Hugh Grant is once again working in high camp villain mode (he did it much better in Ritchie’s The Gentlemen), with a fake tan and sleazy dialogue. Aubrey Plaza gets her share of bad lines, but at least she’s funny enough to make them work. Josh Hartnett is passable as the action star who is in over his head, but long gone are the days where anyone would believe Hartnett has star power even on a meta level. Statham is Statham, so if you want to see Statham do what Statham does (beat up and shoot people with the occasional bon mot forced into the script), have at it.
Although The Gentlemen wasn’t a massive critical success, it did well with audiences. Ritchie’s more stripped back actioner Wrath of Man was passable but nothing particularly inventive. Long gone are the days of the wideboy crime comedies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, which gave Ritchie the reputation of a Cool Britannia director.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre makes one of the classic mistakes that any movie can make, by showing a much better movie in it. In this case, it’s Ritchie’s favourite film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yearning to watch more scenes from George Roy Hill/William Goldman’s 1969 classic instead of whatever is happening in Ritchie’s mess is a fair reaction.
Even by Ritchie’s own uneven standards, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a misfire. Delayed due to the conflict in Ukraine due to having some of the bad guys be Ukrainian, Ritchie could have taken the time to edit out the references to their nationality and have them as non-descript Baltic baddies, but he didn’t. Releasing the film while the conflict is ongoing isn’t going to be met with applause. Then again, it’s hard to find anything to applaud in Ritchie’s colour-by-numbers action comedy. The real ruse will be trying to get people into the cinema – perhaps if Guy puts everyone in a big wooden horse, he has a chance.
