Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 54 minutes
Director: Guy Ritchie
Quick Impressions:
“The best movie out right now is going to be Creed III,” I said frankly to my husband.
“But we haven’t seen Creed one and two yet,” he pointed out, rather shocking considering how excited we were about Creed initially. We’re fans of the original Rocky. We loved Fruitvale Station and immediately afterward promised each other that we would see any future collaboration between Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan. But…we didn’t. (I have no explanation.)
“We can’t see Creed III first,” my husband said sensibly.
“Can’t we?” I wondered. (I’ve seen sequels first before, and it’s worked out just fine. In fact, I’m pretty sure back when we saw Rocky Balboa together, I hadn’t seen the original Rocky yet.) But my husband prefers to approach life in a way that makes sense, and we were both too scared of that long-held Children of the Corn remake (though for different reasons), so we ended up at Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre.
Under the circumstances, we were reasonably excited to see it. We did both love The Gentlemen (more than most people. We thought it deserved a warmer reception than it got). And I’ve recently been reflecting that until a mad eleventh hour scramble, I saw so few movies in 2022. But of the ones I did see before late December, I especially liked Emily the Criminal and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. At a glance, Operation Fortune seemed a bit like a mashup of those two films—and it is. It’s exactly like that. Completely.
Somewhat ironically given our Creed concerns, Operation Fortune feels a bit like a sequel, perhaps even an installment deep within a long-established franchise. In fact, during the first few minutes of the movie, I wondered uneasily, “Wait! Is this a sequel?” Then I thought, “Wait! Is this a Bond parody?” (You know, something less over-the-top than Austin Powers, but still a light-hearted Bond riff.) Cary Elwes one hundred percent seems like he’s appearing in a comedy, so it took me a minute to get a good read on the movie’s tone.
But I managed not to have a panic attack like I did at Cocaine Bear, so I think that improved my viewing experience overall.
The Good:
As I watched this film, before long, I started thinking, “I can’t wait for this one thing to happen.” Without noticing consciously, I spent most of the movie waiting for it to happen, looking forward to it. Then I finally realized what I was doing and started quietly berating myself, “Sarah, what is wrong with you? Why on earth would you expect that to happen? That makes no sense! Why are you watching this film as if it’s moving toward that moment. That’s not happening.”
Then it happened.
It was so satisfying.
I was berating myself for getting too distracted by the metadramatic charade (to the point that I didn’t even care about whatever MacGuffin they were chasing around or whatever). Then as it turned out (somewhat improbably) that’s what Guy Ritchie was more invested in, too.
I’m always like this. Any time there’s a charade or an assumed identity in a movie, I involuntarily get ridiculously invested in whatever pretend story is being concocted until I end up convincing myself, “Maybe the lie will turn out to be secretly true or eternally sustainable somehow, and then in the end, everybody will be best friends.”
I really was very shocked when the movie actually veered in this direction.
I don’t think mentioning this (in these vague terms) spoils much. For one thing, this isn’t Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. You’re not watching for the intricate plot. This is a movie you see if you’re in the mood for light-hearted, adventurous action scenes with a bit of good-natured comedy that makes you smile instead of laugh (with one extremely well executed exception). Like all spy movies, it offers extravagantly wealthy antagonists and exotic locales. (In fact, after seeing this and Aftersun, I’m seriously considering taking a trip to Turkey.)
The set up of this movie is probably the funniest part because it offers such a blatant riff on Hitchcock’s MacGuffin concept. “Something was taken.” “What?” “Hmm…we don’t know. Better go find it. This could take a while…”
If you like Jason Statham in his other movies, you’ll like him in this one, too. This is the best Josh Hartnett movie I’ve seen in a long time (mainly because I haven’t seen him in anything for a long time). I remember Bugzy Malone (who has quite a catchy name) from The Gentlemen. I liked him in this and wish his character got more to do a little sooner.
Both my husband and I came away with the impression that Aubrey Plaza was embroidering her own character, giving the part some added pizzazz. That may not be true, but it comes across that way. We come away with a strong sense of who Sarah is, and why she’s not just one of the many people who fades into the background.
Hugh Grant’s presence is extremely welcome. (When his character first shows up, I thought, “Oh good.”) And, of course, Eddie Marsan is in the movie.
Best Scene:
My husband and I came away with extremely strong, identical impressions. This will sound like a much worse insult than I intend. For both of us, the standout scene of the film comes late, when one character quietly threatens others who have tried to double-cross him. The movie is almost over at this point. My husband put it best. “I wasn’t emotionally invested until that moment.”
Best Action Sequence:
For an action movie, there’s not that much action. But the fight choreography is a pleasure to watch—there’s a little visceral thrill in it. One of the great pleasures is that we’re told repeatedly that Orson Fortune is extremely impractical and difficult to control. Coming into any tense scene, the audience always knows that Orson absolutely will start a physical fight with someone no matter how inadvisable it is. We’re also pretty sure he’s going to win every time. I’m not sure that any one of these scenes stands out above the rest. Basically any time everyone is insisting, “Do not let Orson physically engage with this person. It would be extremely unwise,” we just know Orson will for sure attack this person and win the fight. This is a low-stress movie. Orson is so, so good at fighting people highly trained in combat you should never fight.
Best Scene Visually:
I liked a fairly early scene in the airport involving a man with a suitcase. This kind of reminded me of The French Connection, except it was more engaging with way less shaky cam and a lot more tasing.
Best Joke:
There is only one joke in this movie that made me laugh. And it is so dumb. But it is set up so well, and executed so brilliantly, with such impeccable timing. It kind of makes you think of Crocodile Dundee, and you almost want to groan because you know for so long that it’s coming. But you have to laugh (at least I did) because it’s so well executed. I chuckled out loud. (I also thought to myself, “This is why movies [edit 3/8: need editors]. I could make much better home videos if I were working with a professional editor.” It must be hard to be a film director. A novelist wouldn’t need someone else to time something like this well. Even on the stage, as a director, you could get the effect you want with just the actors. But a film needs an editor to pull something like this off.) (Just in case anyone thought movies didn’t need editors. I sometimes wonder about my own asides. Clearly, I need an editor.)
[Edit 3/8: I don’t know how the last half of that sentence disappeared, and I could have fixed it without drawing attention to it, but since it’s about editing…]
The Negatives:
After the movie, I assumed my husband would think I was crazy when I explained what my focus had been most of the time. I took myself to task for sure, thinking, “Sarah, are you watching a rom-com while everyone else is watching a spy movie? It makes no sense for them to do that thing.” (And then the movie was like, “We’re doing that thing!”) In my head, it didn’t make any sense. Surely spies don’t base their allegiances on how much screen presence people have or how good an actor they are.
But my husband interrupted excitedly and insisted, “No let me tell you first!” (because our thoughts were so similar, and he didn’t want me to think he was just agreeing with me).
That’s when he told me that he didn’t become emotionally invested in the movie until a scene that happens in (I would guess) the last fifteen minutes. After not being invested so much of the time, he was taken by surprise by a sudden surge of emotion. He’s right. It is a magnificent scene, clearly the standout of the movie.
“What’s weird,” I said, “is that the plot is so generic, even the characters don’t care about it.” Somehow, their own scheme becomes the most substantial element of the plot of the movie.
It’s a little weird because you think, “Why am I rooting for this so hard? This is a bit morally nebulous, isn’t it?”
These characters seem like they’re more committed to theatrical displays than to “patriotism,” a word people keep mentioning in early scenes of the film but doesn’t seem to make anyone too excited. You watch and think, “Guy Ritchie, you were never a spy! At heart, you were always a movie director!”
The problem is, of course, that up until the last fifteen minutes or so, the movie is lacking a little oomph. The early scenes flicker by, and they’re fun and everything, but we don’t have too much reason to care about what happens to these characters we’ve just met or that whatever thing we don’t even know what it is.
(I found the villains’ plan for what the MacGuffin turned out to be extremely disappointing. If you had a thing like that, you could do something so much more memorable. But my husband thinks that aspect is extremely realistic.)
For most of its runtime, this movie is pleasant to watch but not anything special. (I kept thinking, “Why couldn’t The French Connection have been easier to watch like this—less shaky cam, higher resolution, just more pleasant cinematography overall. Imagine all the more substantial movies made in the past that could do so much more with currently available technology.)
Also, in some ways, it’s perhaps too similar to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
We would, however, watch a sequel to Operation Fortune. Both my husband and I would enjoy following the further adventures of these characters now that we know who they are. (I especially like Aubrey Plaza).
Overall:
This isn’t Guy Ritchie’s best movie, but it’s entertaining and fun to watch. It’s not stressful in any way, and it has likeable cast, and a surprisingly engaging ending.