Operation Fortune Ruse de Guerre review: Guy Ritchie delivers a slick, entertaining spy escapade

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre marks the fourth pairing of director Guy Ritchie and muse Jason Statham- who has been a Ritchie regular since Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Here, as the stakes go higher in fast-paced, globe-trotting Mission Impossible-like iterations, the convoluted instincts of this espionage thriller come together to provide an engaging, screwball delight.

Yet, Ritchie knows exactly what he’s doing with the demands of a slick, formulaic caper beneath its fastidious title. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is about an invincible spy who is coupled with a series of international assignments that demand a playful yet glamorous bunch of people beside him. There are also some slick action set pieces, but nothing that we haven’t seen before. Still, it playfully ticks these boxes to thread together a stylish thriller that is surprisingly not bowed down by its own version of machismo.

Working with a script co-written with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies, Operation Fortune revolves around Jason Statham’s Orson Fortune, who is a private contractor on a mission, hired by the British government official Nathan (Cary Elwes) to retrieve The Handle, which is in the possession of Greg Simmons (Hugh Grant). He must stop him, and in this mission he assembles a team that includes femme fatale plus tech wizard Sarah Fidel (a scene-stealing Aubrey Plaza), sniper JJ Davies (Bugzy Malone) and Hollywood star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett).

All the elegantly orchestrated action aside, there’s a lot of panache that pays off the obvious narrative exasperation of Operation Fortune. Ritchie is not even interested in building an opening sequence to count on the strategies first, he dives headlong into connecting the distance between two assignments by slipping away into a different location altogether. The cast takes the cunning more seriously than the film does at times- especially Statham, who is conveniently welcoming here with his guiding star presence. Hugh Grant plays Hugh Grant with a cocky accent like only he can (not always for a delight), but it is Aubrey Plaza who injects a much-needed cynicism required for the film with her trademark deadpan delivery. Plaza’s performance is sharper than the entire film put together.

One doesn’t arrive at Operation Fortune with an air of insistence. You let the action sweep your chances of taking it all too well. Ritchie succeeds in that regard to a massive degree, pulling together the loose and silly ends of Operation Fortune with a hard-to-resist efficiency. It is a slick entertaining ride, and Ritchie has got hold of that sense of familiar, action-packed intrigue really well. Fortune will return, if this delicious operation pays off, and it will be interesting to see where this exercise takes off next.