You might say Guy Ritchie is a film director who doesn’t quite get the respect he deserves. His Hollywood movies — the two Sherlock Holmes projects starring Robert Downey Jr as the world-famous sleuth and the live-action Aladdin with Will Smith as the genie — took in more than $2 billion between them.
He’s also frequently refreshed his palate with hugely entertaining romps such as 2019 crime comedy The Gentlemen, where he squeezed a terrific turn out of Hugh Grant as a sleazy private investigator trying to bring down Matthew McConaughey’s cannabis mogul.
Yet in some ways, he’s still arguably best known — in film terms at least — for his landmark debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. That 1998 caper changed the British gangster film for ever, inspiring a host of imitators and gathering plenty of admirers, including Brad Pitt, who turned up in Ritchie’s follow-up Snatch. It also launched the career of Jason Statham, who has gone on to become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand action stars in franchises such as The Transporter and Fast & Furious.
Statham has also remained Ritchie’s go-to leading man, appearing in five of his more than 13 movies, including last year’s Wrath of Man, a B movie heist tale in which Ritchie goes back to basics to craft a grizzled action yarn.
He is now the lead in Ritchie’s new movie, the spy comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, playing the highly capable agent Orson Fortune, who recruits a Hollywood star — played by Josh Hartnett — to get to a billionaire arms broker, played by Grant.
The film, which also teams Statham up with Parks and Recreation star Aubrey Plaza and The Princess Bride’s Cary Elwes, was partly shot in Qatar (as well as Turkey and England). Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art can be glimpsed in the trailer, providing a spectacular backdrop to the action.
“We wanted to shoot somewhere we hadn’t shot before,” Ritchie said…