Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) opens with the British government dispatching an elite team of agents (Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Bugzy Malone and Cary Elwes) to recover some top secret technology that has been stolen. To do this, the team enlists the help of a movie star (Josh Hartnett) in order to gain the good will of a master criminal (Hugh Grant) suspected of the theft. However, things are not always as they seem when a rogue team of operatives attempts to hijack the mission.
As evidenced by the brief synopsis above, Guy Ritchie is up to his old tricks again. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is all momentum. When the film isn’t indulging in spectacular stunts or gruesome combat it is propelled forward by quick quips that cushion the artifice of the film’s comparatively minimal exposition. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is quite literally a theme park ride dressed in all the glitz and glamor of a “Rat Pack” picture.
Fortunately this is the type of escapist and wholly disposable cinema that Ritchie excels at. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre disposes of all the period dressings of Ritchie’s more recent output to continue a return to basics for the filmmaker. Ritchie’s cinema is one of masculinist posturing and ironic self-deprecation. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre epitomizes this modus operandi while not entirely embracing the super fast cuts of Ritchie’s early successes.
What’s different about Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is that, in the form of Aubrey Plaza, there’s a female presence with as much dramatic value as the male action heroes. Plaza doesn’t entirely fall back on her deadpan delivery either, creating a comic character that is actually more compelling and charismatic than Statham. Of all of Guy Ritchie’s films, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is the first film where a woman character is essential to the film and not just a fetishized prop or some nod towards political progressiveness.
Even though Statham is the star of Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, Aubrey Plaza, Hugh Grant and Josh Hartnett steal the film. The lone tough guy type of Ritchie’s earlier oeuvre has been supplanted by the villains and sidekicks in a film where charm and humor get more mileage than white-knuckle action. For those who prefer snappy banter to explosions it’ll come as good news that Ritchie, as of this writing, intends to make a sequel to Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. Could this fledgling franchise mark a new chapter in the career of Guy Ritchie? One can only hope.
