Bad Dads Film Review

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre & Bravestarr

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Episode notes

Sometimes the Top 5 section of the show supports the theme of a particular week, sometimes it’s used to explore a specific aspect of or contribution to cinema and other times it is the consequence of the returning Dan's failure to understand a joke at his expense. We open this week with a chat about the Top 5 Eagles.
 
Who knows exactly how Sidey will cobble together something out of our ramblings about OPERATION FORTUNE: RUSE DE GUERRE, a title so forgettable it immediately induces retrograde amnesia. Guy Ritchie returns - did he ever really go away - with his take on a MISSION IMPOSSIBLE style globe-trotting spy caper, throwing in some inspiration from THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT to bring us the story of Orson Fortune (Jason Statham) forced to recruit Hollywood Star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) in order to stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology. Exotic locations, decent enough action, a story which movies along at a pace, some humour of both the weird and obvious style, in theory there should be a lot to like here. Aubrey Plaza for one thing, Cary Elwes for another or a terrifically pantomime Hugh Grant who mixes his PADDINGTON 2 villain with his turn in THE GENTLEMEN to great effect. Never settling too long to get boring but unfortunately never becoming remotely interesting either such that I was forgetting it as I was watching it which explains our all over the place review.
 
If it was released now we would almost certainly decry it as a shameless politically correct HE-MAN rip off, cynically calculated to sell toys but BRAVESTARR wasn't, it was released in 1987 and the most interesting aspect of it by far is how it was derived from traditions associated with the shamanic cultures of Native Americans and Old West stories except the horses are cybernetically augmented, the bar tenders are green-skinned, orange tashed HULK rip offs and the enemies include enormous demonic cattle and sexy snake women. We enjoyed this but was it just the nostalgia talking really?

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Until next time, we remain...

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