“What’s the name of that funny cancer?” Hugh Grant’s character asks in the new Guy Ritchie movie, “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre.” Mr. Romantic Comedy is playing an international crime coordinator. And he’s playing him using Michael Caine’s voice.
So Grant is close to climbing up the curtains in this film. But the cast also features Audrey Plaza, who is similarly funny if not so much over the top here. And the inclusion of these two in the cast—as well as the great Cary Elwes and Josh Hartnett playing a version of himself--allows Jason Statham to play his lead character without gesturing wildly to point out the jokes.
Statham plays Orson Fortune, a character who remains the sort of likeable English tough guy we are used to seeing him play. But the movie is a cross between a James Bond one and a Mission Impossible. Fortune has a team of crack operatives who can adjust on the fly to government tips and the actions of the villains.
What the British government, represented by Elwes, wants them to do is to first copy a complicated computer program that is in the hands of Simmons (Grant) and then to stop it from passing into unfriendly but, for most of the film, unidentified hands. Someone wants to use the program, referred to as “The Handle,” to cause bank failures.
So for once a movie has a central issue that seems absolutely contemporary — I’m thinking here of the failure, last week, of one of the two dozen largest U.S. banks. Usually the federal government’s interest rate policies and the stealing of electronic programs don’t make good movie visuals. To Ritchie’s credit, these details work a treat here.
So do images of conspicuous consumption. For once movie-goers will come away from a film shaking their heads over how stupid the greedy look. The living circumstances of billionaires look dull and hollow. One doesn’t admire or covet private jet travel, charity gala invitations, or mansion living. Good.
So much for the non-action business of the film. What “Operation Fortune” is more than a comedy or a commentary is an action picture. And its action sequences, which take up perhaps half of the running time, are superior. Fully conceived, well cut, and photographed to maximize viewers’ enjoyment of their rate.
Especially interesting here are two or three stalls. We see the action about to happen. Then the camera goes elsewhere. Eventually there is a flash-back to show what happened in the fist fight we missed. Statham is particularly active here, and Ritchie has made his fighting particularly believable.
Hartnett, playing a more naive version of the character Robert Downey Jr. made famous in “Tropic Thunder,” is both likeable and insipid here. Perfect. Elwes uses a really posh accent to contrast with the cockney Caine one Grant is using. Eddie Marsan plays against type as a government higher up. And serious rap music fans will recognize Bugzy Malone, “The King of the North,” who has a solid turn as a utility thug.
The movie can be funny. And it is being billed as a comedy-action picture. But action is really the main business here. Thankfully there is enough comedy to make “Operation Fortune” entertaining even for those who don’t like the constant violence of John Wick movies and who aren’t interested in satires of familiar movie “franchises.”
