play as a Saturday night live Jason Statham’s spy movie parody comes in this Jason Statham spy film directed by regular cast member Guy Ritchie. The Stath plays the handsome Orson Fortune, a flamboyant agent who breaks the rules of the British intelligence chiefs (Eddie Marsan, Cary Elwes) who have hired him. The script also breaks the rules a bit, in that it doesn’t factor in the complexities of the English language or the believability of anything that happens, but that’s not necessarily a big deal in such a dumb movie.
Some of what lies ahead is predictable (airport shooting, hot tasers, pranks at a charity event in Cannes); some are less predictable (one heist where Orson Fortune sits down to watch a few Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid half a turn, especially the bike scene “The raindrops keep falling on my head”). But it’s all one piece with the overall feel of slapstick. For the most part, what will it do? energy makes things pleasant and easy to forget.
The feeling that no one scripted this material out of taste or decency creates its own kind of tension.
If this were a more serious film, it might seem more important that this is a singularly inappropriate moment in world politics for a bunch of bad guys to be corrupt Ukrainians. In practice, this film is too ridiculous to give the impression that it deals with real human beings; everything here is a cartoon.
Also, the real villain of the piece is Hugh Grant, in utterly gonzo form here as some kind of wealthy arms dealer. The antagonist that he so memorably played Paddington 2Phoenix Buchanan, was an amateur actor who was eventually sent to prison, and Operation Fortuna: cunning warfare it feels like fan fiction set in a world where Buchanan was later cast as Ben Kingsley at his best sexy beast, with a Michael Caine soup for good measure. It’s an amazing performance; Let’s just hope Grant continues to deliver this kind of pantomime villain to a grateful audience. Typical dialogue includes a scene where, reading aloud a password consisting of multiple uppercase and lowercase letters, he says, “Big C-for Clit”. It’s all terribly raunchy, but the sense that no one scripted this material out of taste or decency creates the kind of tension he does.
Intriguing in a different way is Aubrey Plaza in the kind of Bond Girl role that Alan Partridge described as “hot, but I don’t trust you.” Where Grant fully commits, Plaza goes the other way, to no less entertaining effect: you can essentially see her trying to navigate her way through dialogue without dying. She is strangely pleasant to watch. In essence, it’s a quintessentially Ritchie quilt of spy movies and slightly dodgy catchphrases, but somehow, almost, it all adds up to a pretty entertaining film.
Source: EmpireOnline
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
