Prime Time: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)

Guy Ritchie has certainly settled into a new groove in recent years. His output has increased, and he seems to enjoy moving between comedy capers, like this one, and darker fare (such as Wrath Of Man and his upcoming film, The Covenant AKA Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant). Working again with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies on the screenplay, Ritchie and his cast probably had a lot of fun making this. It’s a shame that viewers don’t get to enjoy themselves quite as much as those onscreen.

Something has been stolen, and it is due to be sold off to the highest bidder. It’s not important to know exactly what the stolen item is. It’s important to know that it is very dangerous. The person most likely to be brokering that deal is the super-rich and super-dodgy Greg (Hugh Grant). A team is assembled to get close to Greg. That team is made up of action man Orson (Jason Statham), tech whizz Sarah (Aubrey Plaza), and a man who can support both, JJ (Bugzy Malone). Cary Elwes plays Nathan, the man trying to remain in charge of this small team, and problems arise when he realises that they aren’t the only ones assigned to this job. But they are the only ones who come up with the idea of getting close to Greg by introducing him to his favourite actor, Danny (Josh Hartnett).

I am not going to use this review to try and pretend that I didn’t enjoy this film (and to hell with typing out that unnecessarily unwieldy title every time I am referring to it). This is a fun time, thanks largely to the cast obviously having fun in their roles, but it’s an insubstantial and lesser fun time than many other films directed by Ritchie.

Timing is a big part of that, especially when the central idea is so close to the plot of The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent (which had the added bonus of letting Nicolas Cage playing a version of Nicolas Cage), but there’s also a script issue. This is an action comedy that doesn’t quite have enough action or comedy in it, and I cannot imagine how people will react to this if they aren’t already fans of the cast.

Statham is on good form in the lead role, doing what he does well (being charming, cocky, and good at punching people in the face), and both Plaza and Malone work well alongside him, the former getting more of the laughs with her constant playfulness and teasing. Elwes has to roll his eyes often as he tries to keep his team in order, and he is subsequently ordered around by Eddie Marsan, fun in an all-too-small role, while Peter Ferdinando does well as the head of the secondary team. Hartnett has a great time portraying a slightly precious actor, roped into a scheme he would rather know nothing about, and Grant delivers yet another hilarious rogue that seems to be his forte nowadays.

A lot of people will enjoy this. There certainly isn’t much here to hate. It just doesn’t do anything as well as expected though, sadly, with the 114-minute runtime feeling overlong, the soundtrack disappointingly sticking very much in the background, no major set-pieces, and a third act that lacks real tension. Nobody ever feels as if they are ever in proper danger, which means that you never get the sense of the stakes being very high. I don’t regret passing some time with this, especially as I like every main player, but I would rewatch either The Gentlemen or Wrath Of Man ahead of it, and I highly recommend both of those films to anyone who hasn’t seen them yet. The former is in line with the tone of this film, the latter is quite a bit darker and more violent.

6/10

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Muscle (2019)

He might not have been getting the love and praise that some of his peers receive, but writer-director Gerard Johnson has been doing some truly outstanding work over the past two decades. His debut feature, Tony, is a hell of a film that you could easily double-bill with Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer if you want an Anglo-American pairing of films about killers that will make you want to bathe in bleach once they're finished. He then waited five years to deliver the astonishing, and all-too-often sorely overlooked, Hyena. It's been another five years. And Muscle is worth the wait. Although I'd prefer to not have to wait ANOTHER five years for the next Johnson movie.

Cavan Clerkin plays Simon, a guy with a depressing phone job, a relationship with his girlfriend that he doesn't realise is going very sour, and no real idea of how to turn his life around. He joins a local gym, and that is where he meets Terry (Craig Fairbrass). After some initial exchanges that have him doubting his decision, Simon eventually agrees to let Terry train him. The two grow close, seeming to become firm friends, and then Terry needs a place to stay, the training becomes more intense, and tempers rise as a potential dream looks set to transform into a nightmare.

Johnson has, in every one of his three feature films, explored various aspects of toxic masculinity (embodied by a secondary character in Tony, then intertwined with a culture steeped in violence and high pressure in Hyena), and Muscle has it brazenly front and centre for most of the runtime. It almost feels, at this point, like the culmination of his film-making obsession, and it makes the film an incredible, and incredibly uncomfortable, watch.

The gym environment is, of course, a perfect setting for exploring this subject. Simon doesn't head along to any big, shiny, national chain. He finds a small gym that seems to be populated only by men, making himself more nervous and applying more pressure before he's even started to train properly. Any gym is an intimidating space. One full of burly men who know what they're doing, where Craig Fairbrass can suddenly loom over you and check your form . . . well, that is already the idea of hell for some people.

Johnson directs with his usual confidence, infusing the scenes with a high energy when necessary and happy to hold the camera on the actors being still when that is equally necessary. The whole film has a palpable sense of violence just simmering under the surface, although you end up seeing more content tied to sexual acts than outright violence, and Johnson moves perfectly from one level of unease to the next, all the way up to a third act that pulls out the stops.

It helps that the main actors here are unafraid to go wherever the story takes them. Clerkin is superb, and absolutely transforms himself after the opening few scenes. Lorraine Burroughs is very good as Crystal, a woman who also ends up in Simon's life after Terry brings more and more shady people into Simon's life and home. Then you have Fairbrass, a man probably still best known to many people either for his main TV roles and his ongoing appearances in many British gangster flicks (half of them seemingly revolving around "the Range Rover murders" of 1995). To say that his turn here is revelatory is not hyperbole. It's the best performance I have seen from him, and he knows exactly how to play things in every scene, whether he's being aggressive or acting vulnerable. There's also a small role for Peter Ferdinando, a regular collaborator with Johnson, and you have solid supporting turns from Polly Maberly, Mark Stobbart, and one or two others.

Muscle may not be QUITE as good as Johnson's previous two features, but that is almost as much to do with how good those films are as it is to do with any small negatives here (mainly some moments in the third act that become a little frustrating as some details are kept hidden away from viewers). Much like Hyena, there's a lot to unpack here as the end credits roll, and rewatches may even lead to you changing your mind on the meaning of the film. I view that as a mark of success.

8/10

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L - R: Peter Ferdinando, me, Gerard Johnson, and . . . a super-lovely colleague/friend of Johnson whose name I have gone blank on, and can only apologise. Pic taken when Hyena was shown at EIFF.

High-Rise (2015)

Based on yet another "unfilmable" novel by J. G. Ballard, High-Rise has been a film that many people have been trying to bring to the screen for decades. The man who finally succeeded where others failed is director Ben Wheatley, helped along by a screenplay by Amy Jump.

The plot sees a man named Laing (Tom Hiddleston) moving into a modern apartment block (aka a fancy block of flats) in 1970s England. The block is full of amenities and luxuries, but only those higher up in the building get to access more of the good stuff, turning the whole building into an obvious microcosm of society. And when people start to upset the order of how things should be, it's not long until the whole environment devolves into an anarchic mix of violence, debauchery, and death.

The thing that threw me about this film is how quickly viewers are thrown into some outright strangeness. Even the earlier scenes, which are supposed to be showing normal life in the apartment block, are just plain odd. And then things go from 0-100 very quickly, with oddness turning into the bizarre and then the absolutely insane. I kept wondering what I had missed, or what scenes had been excised in the editing process and never put back where they should have been. Then I stopped wondering about it. I just started to enjoy the atmosphere of the film, immersing myself in the environment, which is when I started to appreciate everything that this had going for it.

First of all, even by his own standards, this is impressively ambitious directing from Wheatley, managing to make the central building seem both like an entire city and also like a horribly claustrophobic cocoon, depending on just how well things are going. He also keeps all the character shots and cinematography in the strange retro-futuristic style of the apartment block.

The script by Jump may be a muddled mess at times, and that's hard to deny, but it's also full of cutting lines, great individual moments, and a smoke-filled, languid, atmosphere that becomes hazier and hazier as the minds of the central characters start to fray and break.

Then you have the cast. Hiddleston is great in his role, barely holding on to his precarious position in the building from the very beginning, and there are also fantastic performances from Elisabeth Moss, Luke Evans, Peter Ferdinando, and Jeremy Irons, the latter as the architect of the building and the top resident (of course). Sienna Miller, James Purefoy, Keeley Hawes, and Reece Shearsmith also lend solid support, each one playing a memorable resident who may be for or against Hiddleston's place in the heirarchy of the structure.

This isn't a film to watch if you want an easy ride, and it's not even one to watch if you need something that makes sense throughout. It's a dazzling, dizzying, strange experience. Almost like leaning over the top balcony of a tower block and looking down through a kaleidoscope. While other people throw protesting victims over to meet their gravity-hastened demise. And of course I mean that as a compliment.

8/10

Get the disc here.
American friends can pick it up here.

Tony (2009)

Written and directed by Gerard Johnson, and featuring an absolutely fantastic central turn from Peter Ferdinando, Tony is a disturbing, nasty, darkly comic movie.

Tony is the kind of guy that you can see on a busy high street any weekend in most big cities. A quiet, easy to ignore, man who people rarely take notice of. In fact, nobody would ever realise if the man disappeared. Which explains why he can be such an effective serial killer. But when a local child goes missing from the estate some people finally begin to notice Tony. People that he doesn't really want noticing him.

There's not a lot to cover in a review of this film. Nothing is given an extra flourish and there isn't anything to overwhelm you while you're somehow gripped from beginning to end so why does the movie rate so highly? Playing out like a UK version of Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (and I am fully aware of how lazy that comparison is, I apologise, but it's still a fair one) with a dollop of humour, Tony is just a little film constantly punching above it's weight and succeeding.

The performances are all pitch perfect. Ferdinando is so good in the central role that I immediately want to see him in future projects worthy of his skills. Elsewhere, we don't really get any well-known names or faces (besides Ricky Grover) but everyone convinces as whoever they are on screen. Absolutely.

The script is pretty good and direction is solid but this movie is sold, and does so well, on the strength of it's performances. Well done to Gerard Johnson for making so many great, early decisions that the film feels as if people just had to turn up and point the camera. Well worth your time though impatient viewers may dislike the slow start.

9/10.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tony-DVD-Gerard-Johnson/dp/B002RXK792/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385681889&sr=8-1&keywords=tony