Operation Fortune

F Watchlist

One should never ask in this working-class 007 knockoff from British action director Guy Ritchie why his hero, embodied by swashbuckler Jason Statham, is always in control. It is simply so, basically, without ifs and buts. In other words, anyone who asks said question at all may feel out of place in this agent thriller bordering on self-parody. Statham, as a special agent, forcibly recruits a young Hollywood star to infiltrate an aging gangster. The impressionable gangster, much like in Ritchie's more sophisticated last crime thriller The Gentlemen, is embodied by veteran British star Hugh Grant, the Hollywood youngster by comparative nobody Josh Harnett. That's how the ironies work in this film. The rest is burglaries, car chases, fights, explosions, in short: the full genre inventory. And, of course, there is also a beautiful woman or two.