Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre: Neon NZ Review

Cast: Jason Statham, Cary Elwes, Aubrey Plaza, Hugh Grant, Josh Hartnett, Eddie Marsan

Director: Guy Ritchie

It's hard to know exactly what director Guy Ritchie wants to achieve with Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, a movie that's been languishing in the vaults since 2021.

Seemingly shelved amid fears over having Ukrainian bad guys at the time of the Russia war of Ukraine, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre seemingly lacks the flair and flamboyant style of Ritchie's direction and settles for a more restrained and almost constricted take on the Mission: Impossible / James Bond riff it settles on.

Centring on Jason Statham's Orson Fortune, a government contractor and leader of a group of operatives who are tasked with stopping a billionaire arms broker from selling a MacGuffin, the film's mix of spy shenanigans with low-key comedy and formulaic action sequences feels like it's a more muted affair than you'd expect.

Statham seems laid back in extremis throughout, and while his banter with Cary Elwes' prim and proper team leader Nathan has a little more than a class vs crass frisson, he appears to be mostly on auto-pilot throughout.

Thankfully, a more lively Plaza and a positively game Grant enliven proceedings, with the former using her usual quip delivery to breathe life into some of the cliches and with the latter riffing on a Michael Caine-esque villain clearly having a ball throughout.

Granted there is some of the trademark Ritchie wordplay early on, but there's a feeling that more pizazz could have been injected into the script with the Josh Hartnett actor character element feeling like it was a wasted opportunity. It's entertaining in parts, but it's more entertaining fluff than anything deeply memorable.

It's not that Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a disaster by any stretch of the imagination. It's a perfectly passable relatively rote spy thriller that hints at a sequel at the end but never quite provides the urgency and vitality of a first outing to leave audiences crying for one.