All the Guy Ritchie trademarks that made so many of his other films so much fun are visible in “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre,” a new action adventure now streaming on Amazon Prime. Jason Statham comes back for a fifth kick at the can with the director, bringing with him the gravelly voice and fisticuffs first made famous in Ritchie’s “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” There’s also some comedy, outrageous crime, slick cameras moves and a bangin’ soundtrack.
Why then, does it feel been there done that? Is it that familiarity has bred a certain kind of contempt, or is Ritchie coasting on his merits?
All-round action man Orson Fortune (Statham), tech genius Sarah Fidel (Aubrey Plaza) and sniper J.J. Davies (Bugzy Malone) are members of a top-secret British government agency run by Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes). Their latest assignment involves retrieving something called “The Handle,” a gewgaw—we’re not really told—that could cause a rift in the world order.
“We don’t know what’s been stolen,” says Nathan. “That remains a mystery for you to solve. But we need to stop it from getting onto the open market. Threat’s imminent.”
Before it can be sold on the black market, the crew must infiltrate billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds’s (Hugh Grant) inner circle. Their ticket in? International movie star and Simmonds’s favorite actor Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett).
“The best agents are stars,” says Orson, “and the best actors are movie stars.”
“Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” feels like a Xerox copy of the movies that made Ritchie and Statham famous. The world-ending stakes are a bit higher, and there is more lifestyle porn—like private jets and global locations—but the fast pace, the late movie reveal (we eventually find out what The Handle actually does) and the “colourful” characters that have populated his movies from the get go all return but the glow is a bit dimmer this time.
Hugh Grant’s Michael Caine impersonation is a blast, and Ritchie still knows how to move a camera during the action scenes, but because we are so familiar with so many of the elements in play here, “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” almost feels like a sequel to a reboot of a sequel. It’s the law of diminishing returns. The further away you get from the source, the less effective the movie will be. In this case, the sum of all the parts is a bland espionage story that is, at best, serviceable.
On Friday April 7, 2023 I’ll be hosting a Q&A with the director and cast of the new sci fi film “Simulant” at the Scotiabank theatre in Toronto. Guests include director April Mullen and cast members Sam Worthington, Robbie Amell and Alicia Sanz.
Here’s some info on the film: With androids (SIMS) and humans coexisting, Simulant centers around FAYE (Jordana Brewster) who has already pulled the plug on her late husband, now she can’t bring herself to do the same to EVAN (Robbie Amell), his android counterpart. Instead of deactivating Evan, Faye sets him up in an apartment to live illegally on his own. While there he meets Casey (Simu Liu), a brilliant programmer who helps him become more human in order to win Faye back. Unbeknownst to Evan, his new friend is wanted for questioning by a determined Artificial Intelligence Compliance Enforcement (AICE) agent Kessler (Sam Worthington). Evan has to win over Faye’s heart before they are both discovered and he loses everything.
A story I did for “W5,” Canada’s most-watched current affairs and documentary program, on Foley master Andy Malcolm and his team at Footsteps Studio, aired on Sat. April 1 on CTV & CTV GO! “Everybody within the industry,” said recent Oscar winner Sarah Polley, who appears with me in the piece, “kind of worships him.”
Watch Part One of the story HERE and part two HERE to learn how Andy creates the sounds you hear in movies.
A QUICK HISTORY OF FOLEY:
The “Star Wars” lightsaber is one of the most famous props in movie history, but would it have become as iconic without its high-tech hum? We’ll never know, because of one man, sound designer and Foley artist Ben Burtt.
On the set the lightsabers were silent. Cobbled together from thrift stores finds like Graflex camera parts, World War I rifle grenades and faucet knobs, the glowing weapons looked cool, unlike any other sword in movie history, but needed a sound to make it pop.
Ignoring the usual futuristic electronic sounds common to sci-fi movies, Burtt chose to mix “found sounds” to create a more natural sound. The former projectionist recorded the warm hum of projection equipment mixed with the buzz of a vintage television tube. The result was the now instantly recognizable hum of a lightsaber, a Foley effect added to the film in post-production.
Named after movie pioneer Jack Foley, Foley is the art of creating and performing sounds for movies and television shows. The one-time stuntman and silent film director began his sound career at the advent of the talkies, helping to bring movies like “The Jazz Singer” (1927), “Tarzan the Tiger” (1929) and “Dracula” (1931) alive with his techniques to create everyday sounds, like chewing, knocking on wood and footsteps.
For nearly thirty years Foley and his team labored, without credit, adding texture to Universal films with sound. When the studio restructured in the 1950s, Foley’s team, called his “disciples,” scattered, working all over Hollywood. In tribute, when they wrapped a scene they would say, “That’s a wrap. Let’s Foley it,” and the artform Foley created had an official name.
Many of the techniques Foley established are still in use today by Foley artists like Andy Malcolm, owner of Footsteps Post-Production Sound, located in Uxbridge, Ontario, an hour outside of Toronto.
“Watching Andy is like watching a magician,” says “Women Talking” director Sarah Polley.
For decades Malcolm and his team, now including apprentice Goro Koyama, supplied footsteps, page turns, gunshots and any other sound you can imagine in hundreds of movies, including “Women Talking,” “Dune,” “Bridesmaids” and “The 40-Year Old Virgin.”
Malcolm uses cornstarch to create the sound of footsteps in the snow, roast chickens to replicate punch sounds and raw pasta to create the sound of broken bones. Those are just a few of the secrets of his invisible art he revealed to W5 when we visited his “foley farm.”
“He’s a master,” says Polley, “and everybody within the industry kind of worships him. It’s like the energy of a four-year-old imagination, turbo, with adult genius.”
