Does anyone else feel like Guy Richie isn’t really trying much anymore?
That’s not to take a cheap shot at a director who not only was a rare survivor of the Great Brit Gangster Movie Wars of the late 1990s, but is a filmmaker who has been working consistently in large, upscale movies for a hood few years now. But after helping make Sherlock Holmes a Lethal Weapon style action hero and turning the Fresh Prince blue for a live action remake of a Disney classic, I can’t help but feel that with recent direct to streaming output, the king of mockney is starting to get a little lazy.
The latest example of this is Fountain Of Youth, an adventure movie for Apple+ that seems to have been entirely born from the director waking up one morning and going, “fuck it, I think I’m gonna make an Indiana Jones movie – but weirdly bland”. It’s a strange decision to make (especially considering Spielberg already made a bland Indy movie), but while this handsomely mounted production certainly has the fortune, it’s totally missing the glory.
Meet Luke Purdue, a disgraced, man-child archeologist with Marvel-esque daddy issues who we meet in Thailand as he flees a criminal gang with a valuable painting he’s just stolen from them. After escaping, we soon find out that he’s no common art thief as swiping certain canvases means he’s getting closer to unraveling a far grander mystery, one that puts him on the radar of a woman named Esme who, as a “Protector Of The Path” is dedicated to stopping men like Luke from discovering the few secrets history retains. After narrowly escaping once more, Luke heads to London to collect the next painting he needs which just so happens to reside in the art gallery his estranged and freshly divorced sister, Charlotte, curates. The bad blood that exists between the two is hardly eased when Luke nicks a paint from right under her very nose, but after yet another frenetic chase, Charlotte’s inevitable firing ends up with her reluctantly joining her siblings crew.
Their aim is simple. While being bankrolled by Owen Carver, a renowned corporate raider who has been humbled by a cancer diagnosis, Luke hopes to discover the location of the fabled Fountain Of Youth and believes that the brradcrumbs can be found on the various paintings he’s been stealing from all around the globe. Charlotte is understandably as skeptical as a dinosaur denier at a Jurassic Park marathon, but as her crumbling marriage and defunct employment has put the custody of her son on shakey footing, she goes along for the ride while constantly bickering with her idealistic brother.
However, hot on their tail is Interpol, those gangsters from Thailand and, of course, Esme who won’t let her strange attraction to Luke stop her from doing her duty. But even if the Purdues do manage to find the Fountain, will it finally give Luke the acceptance he so craves despite coming with a terrible price?
Look, I’m just going to come out and say it – just because Guy Richie may think he’s a national treasure, it doesn’t mean that he can make a National Treasure and while the Indiana Jones comparisons are understandably valid, there’s a large amount of DNA to be found from The DaVinci Code series and, yes, the films that saw Nic Cage pinch the Declaration of Independence for various reasons. However, while Ritchie once was an innovative voice with his mischievous use of editing and his punchy dialogue, he seems to have settled into crafting a series of snazzy, but disappointingly empty movies that have made their bows on various streaming platforms and have had almost no cultural presence whatsoever.
Like I said, on the surface of Fountain Of Youth, we have a polished looking slice of daring do filled with charismatic actors and dotted with zippy set pieces that sees us ricochet around the globe Luke a pinball with frequent flyer miles. However, it soon becomes annoyingly apparent that Ritchie has fallen prey to the Sloppily Written Streaming Movie Syndrome that regularly afflicts Netflix blockbusters (can you still call them blockbusters if you don’t actually leave your house?) and if feels like everyone involved is just going through the motions. The action, which includes a car chase through London, a train fight and a brawl on a recovered ship wreck, is crisp, but fails to stick in the memory at all and it’s truly tough to find yourself invested when there’s not a single likable character to get behind.
For all it’s faults, Fountain Of Youth could probably have managed to muscle through if you managed to give a shit about any of the major players, but as we go from setpiece to setpiece, you actually find yourself actively disliking the people you’re supposed to be beguiled by, and for and action/adventure film, that’s nothing short of fucking poison. Take John Krasinski’s Luke Purdue, for example – thanks to his roles as Jim Halpert in The Office, Krasinski has managed to hinge his career on playing incredibly likable schmoes that radiate warmth and mischief, but here he’s an insufferable man-child who lectures loved ones one minute about giving up on their dreams and living a regular life and the next gambles their lives in lethal situations based on random hunches he couldn’t possibly know. Maybe with a better script, Krasinski could have made his punchable lead less of an entitled action brat with chronic main character syndrome (the fact that he actually is the main character only makes things worse), but as it stands, there’s a reason Indiana Jones has that jaded edge. However, Natalie Portman’s Charlotte ends up being the polar opposite and rather than being a voice or reason to counteract her brother’s borderline mania, she’s a horrendous nag that sucks what remaining joy could have still existed in the story. Worse yet, Carmen Ejogo, Laz Alonzo and Domhnall Gleeson’s characters all fail to make an impact to such an extent, you generally feel they all could have swapped roles and it wouldn’t gave affected their performances whatsoever. In fact, the only one who emerges as remote interesting is Eiza González’s Esme who similarly stood out in Ritchie’s earlier The Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, but not even she can manage to stir up any palpable chemistry with the fact that Krasinski has seemingly chosen to style his swashbuckling hero after a particularly annoying host of a children’s show.
Maybe I’m being too harsh on Richie, but I’m getting increasingly worried that what cinematic edge he once had has been dulled to a rounded, middle-of-the-road edge by pandering to the streaming market. After all, to produce an action-packed, quirky, globe-trotting adventure movie that somehow contains no real laughs, no actual excitement and no characters to root for is surely as rare and elusive as the Fountain Of Youth itself.
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