FILM REVIEW
OPERATION FORTUNE: Ruse de Guerre
Rated R
114 Minutes
Released March 3rd
Now that the season of weighty Oscar contender films is over, here’s an excellent movie you can just enjoy, a fast-moving action thriller with a “James-Bondian” dark sense of humor, lots of double-takes and sarcasm, where none of the characters take themselves too seriously – Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. It’s a breath of fresh air. Each character is unique and fascinating, each has their own story, personality and voice – they don’t all speak with the screenwriter’s tone, as often happens in movies.
Writer-director Guy Ritchie did what a director is supposed to do. He has brought together a hugely talented group of gifted actors with diverse personalities and set them free to play with the movie shoot like kids on a playground at recess. Ritchie’s life has been filmmaking. He spent his childhood in Hertfordshire, UK, dropped out of school at 15, and never went to film school. In order to break into the industry, he got a job as a runner on film sets, soon started directing music videos and commercials, then writing and directing short films. His first feature – Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), also launched the career of Jason Statham, who now stars in Operation Fortune. Ritchie has a great grasp of a very natural, flowing cinematic language. Here is the team of actors he put together.
Jason Statham grew up in Derbyshire, UK, He was a diver on the British National Diving Team and finished 12th in the World Championships in 1992. He was also a fashion model and black-market salesman. Ritchie gave him his first acting job after spotting him as a model and challenging him to impersonate an illegal street vendor. His role in this film is more complex than his better known role as “Deckard Shaw” in the Fast & Furious franchise.
I love watching Aubrey Plaza’s career light up. She’s always been known for her deadpan style of comedy, cloaking her intensity and passion in a pseudo-placid monotone style. She developed her skills with the improv group Upright Citizens Brigade and starred on Parks & Recreation from 2009 to 2015. Now she’s inhabiting more layered characters, as in The White Lotus. In Operation Fortune she becomes a modern sarcastic femme-fatale.
Josh Hartnett plays the role of a celebrity movie star, a role that in a classic action comedy would have been played by the “dumb blonde,” and he’s hilarious as the innocent who gets yanked into the action. Hartnett is an old soul as an actor. His career took off at a young age, and as he tells it, “I was up there for a couple of years and it (the fame) was uncomfortable. I think trying to stay at the top is a shortcut to unhappiness.” He took a break from acting, got involved in social and climate activism and now chooses his roles and projects very carefully.
Hugh Grant is refreshingly funny as a billionaire arms broker, a switch from his light comedy roles. He still has that childlike persuasive naivete but here clothed in the bad guy’s proverbial “black cloak.”
Bugzy Malone is the biggest success story of this cast. He grew up in a poverty-stricken broken home in Manchester UK. As a teen he was imprisoned. He took up boxing and music with a passion to try to escape his life of crime. He started writing rap music and became a star. He says that his songs become his journal, they are the stories of his past. His role in this movie as the IT expert is far removed from his early life, proving that he has mastered the art of acting.
Operation Fortune is a satirical takedown of celebrity and the power of money. It’s worth a trip to the movie theatre.
Kathryn Whitney Boole has spent most of her life in the entertainment industry, which has been the backdrop for remarkable adventures with extraordinary people. She is a Talent Manager with Studio Talent Group in Santa Monica. kboole@gmail.com
