This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Ruse de Guerre
Plot Overview
British head of intelligence Nathan
Jasmine (Cary Elwes) cuts short the vacation time of their top agent
Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) to have him intercept at Aeropuerto de Madrid a mysterious
package sent from an anonymous source to a nameless recipient
for an unknown reason. The courier turns out to be a civilian chump
hardly worthy of a seasoned tail, but MI6 has a whole team on him
for this little walk in the park. Trouble arises from a competing
team—Americans?—following the same target, which is justified
for the sake of diversity held to generate competition for the best
outcome. Okay. Has nobody ever heard of the adage: too many cooks
spoil the soup?
This is a spy spoof with high PC sarcasm. The station head
is short of stature the way the spy genre gives another in his role
an abbreviated name (M.) The head field agent is overly particular
about his flight arrangements the way James Bond is a picky eater.
He's too buff to be taken seriously for his management cover and is
called on it, but we're beyond stereotypes, we are. The villainous
opponent is a cipher.
Their replacement second fiddle agent is a woman named Sarah Fidel
(Aubrey Plaza.) She's a computer whiz able to crack the opponents'
tight security, a veritable encyclopedia who can snow a curious guard
with a word salad on arcane topics, and pretty enough (“Wow!”)
to pass the girlfriend test. Undercover as “Mikayla”
she can drop a bad girl, sexual innuendo into a casual conversation
at will. Unfortunately, her professionalism has eclipsed her femininity
to the point where she can't convincingly respond to an unwanted pass
from a womanizer (“Who are you?”) and gains the moniker,
“Fake Mikayla.”
Inasmuch as the camera gives us lingering
shots of Sarah's luscious lips as she transmits cogent updates to
her spy teammates in the field, it gives equal time to their
black agent JJ Davies (Bugzy Malone) lining up covering shots on his
scoped rifle/phallic symbol. And while Sarah's diction is precise
to perfection, when it's JJ's turn to transmit, we can't quite make
out what he's saying on account of his regional British accent coupled
with what teachers refer to as lazy diction but is more
likely the ebonics of their race who haven't been descended from the
trees long enough to have mastered the king's English on their negroid
lips. This is used humorously, though, as is given away by the English
subtitles beneath the accented English of Turkish arms broker Qasim
Amari (Ergun Kuyucu) whom we can understand well enough, but
not JJ. They keep his lines short and sweet.
Ideology
This crack team needs to draft outside
help to get close to billionaire arms dealer Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant)
so they can steal a data key from his cell phone. He's a big fan of
Hollywood star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett,) so the idea is
to have his idol show up at Simmonds's War Orphans Fund-Raiser Event.
Danny isn't interested and can't be bought or shamed into it, so they
resort to blackmail. They've got video of Danny in the sack with his
brother's wife. This is an instance of, (Prov. 17:12) “Let a bear robbed
of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly.”
If Danny's brother finds out, things will get very nasty, but not
as bad as if the wrong people decode those mystery files. They don't
know what's in them exactly, but the smart money says it's worse than
a load of AK–47's.
Production Values
“” (2023) was directed and partly written by Guy Ritchie along with fellow writers Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies. It stars Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza and Hugh Grant. The leads were in good form with strong backup as well. Plaza is altogether too pretty to be an effective spy—attracts too much attention—but keeps the guys drooling in their seats. Grant strikes just the right note as a snobbish merchant of death ironically supporting the cause of war orphans. Go figure.
MPAA rated it R for language and violence. It's a writer's wet dream seamlessly integrating various plot lines into a most enjoyable product. And it keeps us on our toes. The foreign settings are not overly distracting. Runtime is 1 hour 54 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The high PC sarcasm, naturally, gives a reviewer pause trying to write something safe about it. I'll fall back on a line from a Caskie Stinnett novel: “There have been—there undoubtedly are worse frauds being put over on the people every day. But all things considered, as the saying goes, this is a real dilly” (92). Along with the sarcasm, the humor includes puns, spoofs, and irony. And while we applaud the film for not recycling the same sorry joke over and over, this diversity creates a new problem. Your buddies may not have their senses of humor in sync with each other, which may result in you all laughing at different places. That could prove awkward. The audience in my progressive town, however, didn't seem too upset; nobody stalked off in a huff.
I quite enjoyed this film. It seemed like fresh material or old material used in a new way. There's a lot about it to enjoy, whatever your tastes.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done action flick. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three and a half stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture was quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Stinnett, Caskie. Out Of the Red. Copyright © 1960 by Caskie Stinnett. New York: Random House. Print.
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