Director Guy Ritchie’s Michael Bay aspirations destroyed this wannabe Mission Impossible because he tried to expand without planning ahead!
There are some films that are so good that you remember them for a long time, similarly, there are bad films that you don’t want to remember at all. Sadly, Guy Ritchie’s latest flick Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre falls in the latter category because it comes out as an amateur version of how Mission Impossible would have looked without Tom Cruise. Its release was delayed, and there were reports that it might have been shelved, however, it did make it to the screen only to disappoint the audience. It would have been better had Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre remained on the shelf because it neither helped Guy Ritchie the director nor his most frequent collaborator Jason Statham and above all, those who paid money to watch the film in theatres.
The Plot
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre revolves around the adventure of super spy Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) who is picked by his frequent collaborator Nathan (Cary Elwes) to lead a team of top operatives tasked to recover a deadly new weapons technology stolen by another team of highly trained operatives. In order to gain an audience with the suspected people involved, the team recruits Hollywood’s biggest movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), since he is the favorite actor of billionaire Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant), the middleman. Things go sideways when reports of a rival team reach the official team, the actor finds out the team’s true intentions and the antagonists begin to get greedy, thus starting the race to get their hands on the weapon that could threaten to disrupt the world order.
The Good
There are many positives that one can take from Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, such as coming up with a trailer that intrigues the audience, giving Josh Hartnett a major role after a long time, shooting at exotic locations like Morocco, France, Turkey, and Qatar to name a few. It opens in the best way imaginable with Cary Elwes’ character walking into his boss’s room to find out that a crime of huge magnitude has occurred and he has to do something to level the playing field. The way he picks his team reminds the audience of all the ensemble films from the past and sets up the film well.
Fans of Jason Statham would be happy to see him reunite with his most successful collaborator while to see Josh Hartnett in a central role would also give the fans of the actor something to cherish. Also, the way the team operates no matter where they are in the world is impressive, and so is the car chase that ends abruptly, but looks good until it lasts. Yes, the film gives the feel of The Man from UNCLE as well as other Guy Ritchie films, but that’s where the positivity ends.
The Bad
The saddest part of Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is that when the audience leaves the theatre, they don’t remember much of the film because there is nothing to remember. The characters are not something you hadn’t seen before on the screen; the stunts have been done to death in Hollywood and other places while the plot seems more childish than anything else. Hugh Grant was wasted in the role, and the same could be said of Cary Elwes who might want to rediscover himself before fading into his past glory. Even Jason Statham’s idiosyncrasies mentioned at the beginning were forgotten once he got into his first fight of the movie as if there never was any issue with his character.
As for the actors playing the spies, none besides Jason Statham registered with the audience. Aubrey Plaza is easily the most irritating aspect of the film because first, she neither looks like the breathtaking beauty her character is supposed to be nor fits the description of a tech-savvy agent. She has no chemistry with Jason Statham or Josh Hartnett which makes her a weak link. Had Bugsy Malone not tried too hard to ape Ving Rhames’s Luther Stickell from Mission Impossible series, he would have been remembered at the end of the film. At times the editing seemed awkward as well, especially in one fight scene which appeared in a flashback later. It would also have been great had the film been marketed as a Mission Impossible spoof with Tom Cruise playing himself but the director had other ideas.
The Verdict 2/5
The way Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre was executed gives the impression that director Guy Ritchie felt like a fish out of the water while directing a linear film, which clearly isn’t his strong suit. He wanted to make a franchise that rivaled Mission Impossible but forgot the very ingredients that made Tom Cruise starrer a bankable entity – perfect casting, a really impossible mission, and never-before-executed stunts. Instead, he gives us a movie when a character falls to his death from a tower, yet the cellphone survives, where hacking a firewall is a piece of cake and where guards are there to die, instead of safeguarding the premises.
Also, the title – translated into Ruse of War – makes the film look more like a con movie than an action-adventure, which sadly doesn’t help the product since it tried to cater to every genre, and failed to register into any one genre. Taking available actors instead of those fitting the characters, shooting around the world without any reason, and releasing a half-baked project are the very reasons why there shouldn’t be a sequel to Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and why Jason Statham should stick to franchises like The Expendables and Hobbs & Shaw where at least he has a proper character and is given the mileage to perform.
