It's been too long since Guy Ritchie came up short.
And with that feeling we are going to continue after his new, effective and routine film:
Operation Fortune: the great deception,
an empty spy story tinged with his usual sarcasm, with good presence and slight drops of what the English director pointed out in his day. .
Another minor work within the filmography of a filmmaker who stood out with his first two feature films, the hooligans and stimulants
Lock & Stock
Y
Snatch: Pigs and Diamonds
.
But that was almost 25 years ago now.
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With Ritchie, it is possible that a point has been reached where, to be fair, comparisons of his creations should be aligned with the rest of his work and not with those fascinating violent and sarcastic delusions, with a harsh image, humorous frenzy and creative editing. , with whom he had an impact in 1998 and 2000. In this way, his latest film could be defined not as a pale reflection of the wide range of sensations created with his first comic
thrillers
, but as a relatively safe continuation for multi-screen audiences of titles as well. discreet, although with a certain energy, such as
Operation UNCLE
(2015) and
Awaken the fury
(2021).
In other words, reinterpretations of classic spy and heist films, effervescent and referential in nature, pop aesthetics and (homo)erotic desire among their characters.
And here it is curious that the starting point is so similar to that of another recent production: the self-parody
The Unbearable Talent of a Colossal Talent, a
vehicle at the service of Nicolas Cage, in which the actor played himself in the middle of a criminal plot.
In
Operation Fortune
, Josh Hartnett is the one who puts himself in the shoes of an action movie star —yes, with a fictitious name for his role—, who is called upon by the plumbers of the British secret service to help them on a mission .
"The world needs you to do your best performance," they tell him.
The reason: his cinematic myth turns out to be the only weakness of the villain on duty, a Hugh Grant who seems to have had a great time.
More academic than classical, Ritchie leaves behind his old extensive editing, visual, and mise-en-scene resources;
those accelerations of the image, the toned colors and, of course, the idling.
On the other hand, also as a scriptwriter, he demonstrates his verve in the sequences with several actions and points of view in parallel (up to three), combined with some of his usual narrative resources, in the case of those disorders in which the action of the present is eluded to present it later as a peculiar
flashback
with a metalinguistic and comedic backlash.
Along with Grant and Hartnett, Jason Statham, the common thread for much of Ritchie's career from his initial peak to his bland present, once again shows his charisma for action.
Yet Ritchie's signature sarcasm and irony in his dialogue smacks of faded glares of yesteryear.
Even the references to him have become too obvious.
Thus, starting his film with a copy (or homage) of the masterful sequence of Lee Marvin walking in
Point Blank
(John Boorman, 1967), with the rhythmic sound of the heels of his shoes marking the tempo of a parallel action at each step, instead of exalting Ritchie for his cinephilia and his good taste, what he does is dwarfs him for everything What comes next: escapism cinema perhaps above average, but below the expectations created around the former Tarantino of the British Isles.
OPERATION FORTUNE: THE GREAT DECEIT
Direction:
Guy Ritchie.
Cast:
Jason Statham, Hugh Grant, Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes.
Genre:
espionage.
United Kingdom, 2023.
Duration:
114 minutes.
Premiere: January 4.
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