Guy Ritchie operates within a strange space in the movie world. He doesn’t seem to be within the same popularity as Spielberg or Tarantino, in fact, I don’t know if mainstream audiences know who he is. On the other hand, his films seem to be making money so he is not a totally unknown identity. He is definitely a director with a style that utilizes some fast cuts and quippy dialog.
I made a post on Wrath of Man back when it came out in 2021. I was not exactly positive about the film and the truth is I am not exactly positive about Guy Ritchie’s filmography as a whole. I enjoyed his earlier works (especially Snatch) but found myself bored with the way he makes movies. However, sometimes he makes a decent film and I thought it would be fun to explore when his films work and when they don’t.
In 2023 he released 2 movies The Covenant and Operation Fortune. One of them is bad and one is not, let’s talk about the bad first
Operation Fortune
Operation Fortune is an action movie starring long-time collaborator of Guy, Jason Statham.
Statham is not exactly what you would call “a good actor” At best he is a funny and charismatic person to watch on the screen, but no conveyer of great emotion. He is serviceable in certain roles.
This movie has nothing good going for it aside from Hugh Grand hammering up his role to a upsered degree, which I thought was pretty funny at times.
A group of special agents recruits a movie star to steal a secret weapon or something like that. The plot is not important because the only thing that matters is for the main team to be as badass as possible. They might from time to time get outplayed by a rival team, but throughout the movie, all fight scenes are practically the same. The main characters use no effort to dismantle their opponents. Statham is never worried that he may lose a fight, almost like his character has read the script and knows what is up.
The Invincible Hero troupe is something I hate with a passion. It takes all the fun out of action scenes. You are not sitting wondering WHO is going to win, but HOW is the main guy going to beat the bad guy? The idea that Stahom in the film might struggle for just a moment is laughable, and thus there is no tension at all.
Guy Richie also writes dialog in the most annoying and tedious way. The fast quips that dominate his earlier work are particularly bad. It feels like a less polished British version of Tarantino dialogue. He has turned it down over the years, but Operation Fortune is filled with rubbish jokes and characters who are so overdone they hardly feel like real people at all.
Guy Ritchie’s narrative philosophy
On Guy’s appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, Guy Ritchie outlined his narrative and story philosophy.
The point of all stories according to Guy is the conflict between a character’s authentic self and the pressure from the outside world to conform.
In simple turns a character wants to do something their own way, but is pressured by others to not do that thing.
While I don’t personally subscribe to this theory it does seem to capture a large amount of stories.
Here also lies one more problem with Operation Fortune. It simply is not convincing enough. It is true that Orson is “pressured” to work by the book, but he is always the coolest man in the room. The pressure doesn’t even exist to him. In the end, he even tells his boss to fuck off as he takes a longer vacation than they want him to have…. The struggle is (not) real.
The Covenant
Released in the same year as Operation Fortune, The Covenant is a story about the Afghanistan war following the soldier John Kirby (Jake Gyllenhaal) as he enlists the help of an interpreter named Ahmed (Dar Salim).
The movie is more serious dealing with themes of duty and loyalty. This also means the characters speak in a normal manner and not with the usual Richie dialog.
If we look at the film through Guy Ritchie’s own philosophy we can clearly see what he is trying to achieve. Ahmed is very unorthodox and doesn’t follow John’s orders most of the time. However, Ahmed is always right and he even saves John and his team at one point. We see the established way of doing things challenged by Ahmed.
After Ahmed saves John and drags him to safety he vanishes and decides to stay in Afghanistan. John feels an immense debt to Ahmed that he has to pay back. He tries to arrange for Ahmed to get US citizenship. A task that is much more difficult to achieve than first expected. Now the established forces are fighting against John and he must go a different route in order to secure the citizenship for Ahmed.
The movie thus becomes more focused with a better troughline. The annoying dialog is not a factor and the main characters don’t feel invincible. In fact, there is constant tension throughout the film.
While there are things that don’t really work in the film it does not detract from it being a well-thought-out and well-made film. It’s not the greatest war movie ever made, but for Guy Ritchie, it’s perfectly fine.
So where does Guy Ritchie belong in the mainstream?
He has been married to Madonna and has been on The JRE Podcast, so I guess he is kind of famous, yet I doubt the majority would recognize him on his name alone. His first 2 films are generally looked upon favorably (as do I) and his Sherlock Holmes films were very popular upon release. Though I have not seen them recently and there is a chance they might not hold up as much anymore.
Otherwise, Guy Ritchie is very hit-and-miss. His King Arthur film was not only bad but extremely forgettable.
Guy Ritchie seems to be the kind of director who showed some character and personality early on but failed to continue his momentum into his career.
Most directors generally fall off in terms of quality over the years, Guy fell off really quickly.
I think he has a lot of ideas and an interesting way of approaching movies. However, The overall quality of his filmography is lacking. That being said he is still capable of turning out good films on a rare occasion.