Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre: A Skippable Action Movie

Every year there is a major theatrical release that seems like it could be promising in premise but just fails to deliver on just about every front. Last year, this role was occupied by The Contractor or Morbius, and this year, the role will be occupied by Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. Aside from the comedic beats from two of the leads, very little about the movie actually works, which makes for just a boring action movie.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre stars Jason Statham as a British special agent who is brought in to track down something very valuable that was stolen. He has to team up with his handler (Cary Elwes), a new communications and tech person (Aubrey Plaza), his usual muscle and footman (Bugzy Malone), and a major movie star (Josh Hartnett) to track down this piece of technology which has fallen into the hands of a multi-billionaire arms dealer (Hugh Grant).

Before getting into the plentiful negatives, there is a notable positive to the film. The comedic chemistry between Statham and Plaza makes the movie (somewhat) worth watching, maybe not in a theatrical experience, but maybe on streaming. Some of the comedic moments do work better than others and the moments that do are usually carried by Statham and Plaza.

That said, the areas surrounding these moments do not work nearly as well, with the plot and the action being some of the most cumbersome parts of this action film. The plot is borderline nonsensical, with very little information about the actual goal given to the point where no character feels like they have a goal. The “twist” is not even contrived, it’s just poorly executed because it’s the strangest combination of both impossible to see coming due to the fact that it is never set up at any point in the plot and the most obvious twist on the planet if anyone has ever seen one espionage movie before. The intent of the film appears to be to have the comedic aspects be the primary goal, however, the jokes don’t land a good amount of the time so the fact that the narrative has nothing resembling cohesion suddenly becomes a glaring issue.

The other major issue is that the characters do not have an arc or goals and are also not endearing enough to make them worth watching while they do not carry out anything meaningful. Specifically, the Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent-esque relationship between Grant’s character and Hartnett’s character is uninteresting, which is especially disappointing because of how large of a percent of the runtime it occupies. The narrative moves from plot point to plot point because that’s where the story needs to go, not because it feels like anyone is moving organically toward that goal. It very much is a straight line from point A to point B without earning the transition from point to point.

Ultimately, if someone wants to see a good action movie, they should probably stay home and watch something on Netflix or Amazon Prime rather than see Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. The action elements and few and far-between comedic moments are not interesting enough to carry the lackluster plot over the finish line into the realm of it being an enjoyable movie.

Final Rating: 4/10