«Operation fortune», the new film by Guy Ritchie as a new chapter of 007 (score 7)- Corriere.it

Without knowing anything, “Operation fortune” from April 17 on Sky cinema 1, streaming on Now and on demand, could be to all intents and purposes the 25th chapter of the long-running 007 series, waiting for them to find the new James Bond. There is, in the film by Guy Ritchie, Madonna’s ex-husband, debutant 25 years ago with “Mad and Unleashed” and then author of the Sherlock Holmes series with Robert Downey jr. and Jude Law, everything to which the espionage genre à la Fleming has accustomed us, from 1962 to today, a subject that is always the same with variations.

On the poster, an MI6 agent (the British secret services) recalled from the holiday – Jason Statham, who collaborated with Ritchie from the beginning and has the phisique du role, sexy bald alpha macho in the memory of Yul Brynner – a counter-espionage chief with very British ways, a rich arms dealer, even a movie star used as a weapon of exchange and blackmail (Josh Hartnett, romantic at the time of “Pearl Harbur”) and a multi-use and multi-treacherous girl. The aim is, as always, to save the planet from a bad guy who in this case, with a mysterious technological weapon called the “handle”, of which everyone knows everything except the spectator, wants to lead us towards the collapse of the currency, the banking crisis and the resurrection of gold.

The only drawback, in the casting, the presence of two “rascals” Ukrainians who end up badly but who perhaps shouldn’t have been included in the plot, even if the script was changed during filming and Putin’s invasion, postponing the film’s release for a long time (set for March 2022 ) due to issues of “politically correct” when the two antagonists are precisely, inappropriately, Ukrainian gangsters. But there are, even robbed. The rest, about two hours, is part of that adrenaline-pumping genre that is now all the rage in action cinema, mixing haphazardly, espionage and thriller, with the positive peculiarity that in this case the first part of the adventure is kept in the tone of comedy, thanks to the now slightly wrinkled smile of a billionaire and disreputable lawyer, Hugh Grant.

But then it gets into the action pack with chases through heaven and earth, double crosses, perfidious looks, attempts at seduction and a few choice fistfights from Stratham that frees us from any enemy with a few but exact low blows. They called it a spy action comedy, unfortunately there is no Stanley Donen, it is not “Charade”, of those the mold has been lost, but in the material, as always overabundant and with too many secret exchanges, the very absurd thread of the plot keeps attention, with a few selected yawns, running away with the best agents and the best cheaters in the world, until the end, always based on 007, in which ours, once the job is done, takes a few days off. The cast is almost star, there is Aubrey Plaza (the weak point and the dubbing does not help, we recommend listening to it in the original language), there is Cary Elwes, and there is Bugzy Malone, in addition to the already mentioned among which Grant is the coolest with his head and Statham the least cool with the extra large hands that he still uses less than usual.

The object of contention on which salvation depends of the world, is becoming increasingly insidious and incomprehensible: but 007 had already fought against Goldfinger, third episode, and the American gold reserve in a legendary title by Terence Young, best Bondian director together with Sam Mendes. Here technology, which does not need many explanations because one pretends to take its word for it, plays the mistress, even if then the moments of fun are when the agent fights with enemies that appear in front and behind, often in pairs, between hotels, resorts, panoramas and private planes, works of art, while the 55-year-old Englishman Statham (something you don’t do for marketing!) confesses that this of “Operation fortune” was his most dangerous operation, risking himself as a stuntman , of falling face down on the asphalt, he used to always be Fast and Furious.