SOME SUBTLE SPOILERS AHEAD

With the exception of Revolver, I’m a fan of most Guy Ritchie movies. He tends to make the kinds of films that I want to watch, and for that I am grateful.

For any other Guy Ritchie movie fans out there, I’m sure you’ll enjoy his latest production, Operation Fortune. However, although it may float your boat, it may fail to float it all the way up into the lower stratosphere.

Ritchie’s two previous directorial outings were The Gentleman and Wrath of Man. If I were to rate The Gentleman at one hundred, I’d reckon Wrath of Man scored about eighty. If those two highly subjective scores are close to being in any way generally accurate, then Operation Fortune comes in somewhere between the two, scoring at about ninety or thereabouts.

For a sketch of a review, Hugh Grant essentially reprises his character of Fletcher from The Gentleman, though with a lot more cash on hand. Without shocking you I’m sure, Jason Statham reprises his usual role from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, The Transporter, The Expendables, Parker, and Wrath of Man, amongst many other movies of lesser repute. Fortunately for us all, he also avoids reprising his peculiar weirdness from Revolver.

Moving on to supporting roles, it’s great to see the actress Aubrey Plaza pop up from being Ron Swanson’s usual sidekick in Parks and Recreation. Josh Hartnett also convincingly portrays a generic major Hollywood movie star, ‘Danny Francesco’, within a stylistic thespian melange of perhaps Christian Bale, Russell Crowe, and Mark Wahlberg.

From Guy Ritchie’s usual ‘stable’ of acting talent, two other notable mentions in despatches include a pair of English actors from The Gentleman – Eddie Marsan and Bugzy Malone – who help prevent this movie from being too Hollywood.

So why a review on Libertarianism.UK? Well, there’s a surprise in the tail, because although one could hardly accuse Guy Ritchie of being a definite believer in Ancapistan, right at the end of the movie within the climax scene, I did detect a sort of ‘Austrian gold bug’ trend going on, which on reflection had been tangentially evident throughout the film. If you watch the movie yourself, listen out for the magic word ‘gold’ to see if you agree with me.

Before I go, I must also offer a single note of warning; a strange and completely unnecessary nod to what the Critical Drinker might call ‘The Message’ appears within the end credits. However to be kind, I’ll assume that Guy Ritchie may have secured the last of some critical Hollywood funding with this callout to the diversity and inclusivity brigade, so I’ll forgive him. As it’s in the end credits, it also avoids spoiling things too much, even though in my opinion it is completely unfaithful to the underlying characteristics of both roles involved, though I do recognise that there’s nowt as queer as folk.

Summing up, this is a good if unspectacular Guy Ritchie movie, though I do need to admit that I would’ve preferred him to have released The Gentleman II instead. Oh well, perhaps next year he can get round to that.