Gentlemen of bad luck – Newspaper Kommersant No. 3 (7448) dated 01/11/2023

Guy Ritchie’s comedy spy thriller “Operation Fortune: The Art of Winning” is released. The director, beloved in Russia, delivers exactly what is expected of him: car chases, shootouts, Jason Statham’s wry grin, and another self-ironic outburst of Hugh Grant as a villain. The sum of these terms, according to Julia Shagelman, it is quite capable of entertaining, and nothing more is required of it.

Guy Ritchie, as any moviegoer over 35 will remember, got his start in the late 1990s directing edgy and brash action crime films with a distinctly British flavor that has been compared to Tarantino himself. He then retrained as a Hollywood employee for more than a decade, producing big-budget star-studded glossy films from Sherlock Holmes (2009) to Aladdin (2019) with varying financial success. In 2020, Ritchie is back where he started, directing the blatantly politically incorrect and desperately old-fashioned crime comedy The Gentlemen for just $22 million (it grossed five times as much, and the Russian public played its share in this success, bringing it to the box office 1 .2 billion rubles, thanks to which the film took third place in the domestic box office of that year).

This was followed by an experiment – the heavy revenge drama “The Wrath of Man”, which, however, also appealed to domestic viewers. However, to date, Ritchie seems to have stopped flirting with “serious” cinema, returning to the development of a gold mine of action comedy, where jokes are easily and naturally combined with explosions. True, Jason Statham, who played the main role in The Wrath of Man, was also invited to the new picture – all in the same role as an impenetrable and indestructible tough guy, in which a drop of humor is added, which, however, is also quite blockheaded.

Statham’s character here is called Orson Fortune (hence “Operation Fortune”), and he is a hired agent in the service of … I think the British government? This is not really clear, but Ritchie and his two co-authors of the script (Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davis) tried to disguise the geopolitical affiliation of their heroes so that no one would be offended (according to rumors, the release of the picture was pushed back, including due to the fact that she had to black out “Ukrainian gangsters”). Be that as it may, at the beginning of the film, unknown people in camouflage are kidnapping out of nowhere, and a worried official named Norman (Eddie Marsan) instructs a certain Nathan (Cary Elwes) to assemble a team to return it out of nowhere. Later, the MacGuffin begins to be called “titan”, but what it is, it turns out only in the last third of the tape.

The mercenary team is led by Orson, who is very unhappy about being pulled out of a vacation he is spending in Morocco at the expense of his employers. He is joined by young aspiring agent JJ ​​(Bugsy Malone) and hacker Sarah Fidel (Aubrey Plaza). To find the “titan”, they need to infiltrate the entourage of the weapons baron Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant, as always, with rapture portrays a vile reptile), and for this, in turn, blackmail the movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) into their ranks, which Simmonds is a fan of. Additionally, the situation is complicated by the presence of a competing team led by Mike (Peter Ferdinando), who works for no one knows who, who also needs a “titan” for some reason.

The plot, of course, does not shine with either logic or consistency. For example, at the beginning of the film, Johnny is repeatedly mentioned, who went over to Mike from Orson, terribly offending the latter, but you should not expect this gun to fire – having devoted several dialogues to the discussion of betrayal, the authors completely forget about him. Scenes of chases, fights and shootouts, comic reprises of Hartnett playing a parody of all narcissistic celebrities at once, and episodes in which Plaza smartly taps computer keys and flirts woodenly with Statham are mixed in random order, and the film crew is clearly just enjoying the trip to warmer climes (producers had enough budget for Turkey). Surely, on the other side of the screen, there are those who want to share this pleasure. Especially considering Guy Ritchie’s past successes in the Russian box office and his current lack of competitors.