Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) is a master spy. He's also the lead character of the new Guy Ritchie movie Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, highly-skilled in combat, and sharing a name with a pig from the U.S. Acres comic strip. Fortune has been hired by Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes) to lead a mission to retrieve an unknown yet decidedly cataclysmic item that has fallen into dangerous hands. Working alongside hacker Sarah Fidel (Aubrey Plaza) and expert sniper J.J. Davies (Bugzy Malone), Fortune is off to save the world, a task that leads him to go head-to-head against eccentric billionaire Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant). Getting close to this guy will require exploiting his infatuation with celebrities. Time to throw in movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) onto Fortune's time. Two thing's are for certain here: this is going to be an unusual mission and Orson Fortune will be beating people up within an inch of their lives if given half a chance.
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (Jesus, what a clumsy title) is director Guy Ritchie's second foray into espionage following his 2015 film The Man from U.N.C.L.E. That's not the only familiar element of Ritchie's filmography to reappear here, as Statham, Hartnett, Grant, and Eddie Marson are all returning from his earlier works. Ritchie is working on familiar ground with familiar faces here, which might explain why the script (penned by the director alongside Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies) feels so rudimentary. The film is rarely incompetent, but it's also lacking in surprises, especially compared to Ritchie's detour into much darker territory with his 2021 film Wrath of Man.
Whereas that film suggested Ritchie was expanding his cinematic palette to include grimmer ruminations on the costs of vengeance, Operation Fortune delivers what you'd expect but without much pizazz or excitement. It's a half-hearted cover song of better movies. Part of the issue is that the production gets less glamorous as it goes on. When we first meet Orson Fortune, he's lounging about in a luxurious hotel decked out in blue walls. This indicates that the production design of the whole feature will be taking more cues from Jacques Demy than Paul Greengrass. Alas, by the time third-act arrives, Operation Fortune has devolved to just having Statham beat people up in a silver-colored elevator while a final shootout takes place in a generic office.
There's also not much in the way of cheeky surprises or unexpected flourishes in either the writing or fight choreography. Despite occupying the spy genre, which is famous for its unexpected twists and morally grey allegiances, Operation Fortune goes down all the familiar roads. People who are antagonists in scene one end the story as antagonists, it's all quite predictable. The bog-standard elements are executed with shockingly little vibrancy in either the camerawork or editing. It all just feels way too paint-by-numbers for a movie that wants to be riotous. All of this is compounded by the dreadful lack of tension in the screenplay. Even in the Mission: Impossible movies, Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt tends to trip, get hit by a car, or run out of oxygen during big action sequences. Here, Orson Fortune always pulls off everything without a hitch it never feels like he's in danger. Why should we be on the edge of our seats if we already know the exact outcome?
Nobody's expecting Jason Statham to get offed in the middle of a Jason Statham movie, but a little bit more vulnerability would've made the plot seem less weightless. That's a key issue here, the lack of real long-term problems. Even Danny Francesco manages to get over his initial fear of being a super-spy in the span of one scene. Other Guy Ritchie movies are brimming with ticking clocks and claustrophic conflict, but Operation Fortune is breezy to a fault. These subpar details mean the production only really comes alive when two of its performers get to chew up the screen. Aubrey Plaza and Hugh Grant are unquestionably having the time of their lives showing up in this film. Plaza's deadpan style of grim humor feels like a unique element in the world of spy cinema (do you remember anyone like her showing up in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?) while Grant is just a ball as an unabashedly sleazy guy who loves to brag about all the wicked people he's helped over the years.
Whenever Plaza and Grant get to take center stage, Operation Fortune finds a pulse and functions just fine as easygoing entertainment. Throw in some lovely European locales for this attractive cast to walk around in and there's no denying this is at least better than some other entries in Guy Ritchie's filmography, like King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Elements like Plaza and Grant's performance, though, deserved a better movie to inhabit. Painless to sit through, Operation Fortune is still an inert movie that needed an extra jolt of creativity and energy. Oh, and also another first name for Orson Fortune, I should not be reminded of U.S. Acres during a spy movie.
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