2023 - OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE - an entertaining action thriller

Kind of a mouth full for a film title.  This action comedy from Guy Ritchie seems like it could be a part of his Man From Uncle film universe.  Guy Ritchie likes to work with the same actors in this case Jason Statham, Hugh Grant and Josh Hartnett to name a couple.  In this film he's added the comedian Aubrey Plaza and "Westley" from The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes.

The plot is about a team of intelligence agents out to recover some gizmo called "The Handle" which is some kind of super weapon or something from Billionaire Hugh Grant (in a very funny performance).  Grant has a thing about Hollywood actors so secret agent Statham (in a real amusing deadpan performance) and his team recruit an action star played by John Hartnett (another funny performance), to get inside Grant's estate.  Along the way Statham and his team must do battle with a rival bunch of spies to get "The Handle."

 

This is all fairly entertaining stuff and it lets Ritchie stage his usual over the top action scenes.  But for nonsence like this, all of the fighting and running around is very entertaining.  As I indicated earlier this film reminds me of Ritchie's underrated action film The Man From Uncle a film that also featured Hugh Grant although he's a lot funnier here.

 

This film unfortunately was released while the COVID pandemic was going on so it didn't do particularly well at the box office, it's still entertaining.

The screenplay is by Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Bill Block.  The running time is 114 minutes.