Director – Guy Ritchie – 2025 – US – Cert. 12a – 126m
*
Two estranged, treasure-hunting siblings, with the help of a rich backer, pursue the trail towards the life-giving water source of legend, pursued by forces that want to prevent them from doing so – premieres globally on Apple TV+ from Friday, May 23rd
Films get made in a variety of different ways. According to the press handouts, this one came about initially through producer Tripp Vinson’s research into the legendary Fountain of Youth and the desire to have a globe-trotting hero searching for it. This idea was developed by screenwriter James Vanderbilt (Scream VI, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, 2022; The Amazing Spider-man, Marc Webb, 2012; Zodiac, David Fincher, 2007) into where the hero was not one but two people, an estranged brother and sister. When director Ritchie later came on board, he brought to it the idea of the journey being more important than the destination. This is not, therefore, a director-led project. In the process of making movies, however, it is ultimately the director, once they are on board, who is responsible for the myriad decisions that are taken in putting the film on the screen. To my mind, this film, which from its producer and screenwriter origins ought to be a winner, is awash with bad directorial decisions. That’s a pity, because it appears to be very different to anything Guy Ritchie has previously made, and it might just have turned out very well; indeed. I really wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Luke Purdue (John Krasinski) is riding his bike through Bangkok on his way to the airport when he finds himself in between Thai gangster Kasem (Steve Tran) and his men in SUVs on either side who want the stolen painting from the roll on his back. After a frantic car chase, he catches a train out of the city only to have a fight with the girl he chats up on the train Esme (Eiza González from I Care a Lot, J. Blakeson, 2020; Baby Driver, Edgar Wright, 2017; Ambulance, Michael Bay, 2016) who turns out to be in with the gangsters.
Meanwhile in London, his estranged sister Charlotte (Natalie Portman) is going through unpleasant divorce proceedings and is concerned for the custody of her son. Luke further alienates her by visiting her at the National Portrait Gallery where she is the curator by stealing a Rembrandt and forcing her to ride in his car after she pursues him on foot through the gallery for the theft, making her an accomplice – even though, by the time Interpol’s Inspector Jamal Abbas (Arian Moayed from Spider-man: No Way Home, 2021, Jon Watts; Rosewater, Jon Stewart, 2014) turns up at the Gallery to later question her, the painting has been returned.
What Luke – and his backer Owen Carver (Domhall Gleason) and accomplices Patrick (Laz Alonso from Detroit, Kathryn Bigelow, 2017; Avatar, James Cameron, 2009) and Deb (Carmen Ejogo from Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott, 2017; Selma, Ava DuVernay, 2014; The Brave One, Neil Jordan,2007) were looking for was information in the form of the sixth letter of a cipher found on five other paintings, but it wasn’t there. This is because, Charlotte explains, the painting was a copy by Rembrandt of his original work, which is what they need. Internet searches by his accomplices revel the original to have been in the possession of millionaire Alfred G. Vanderbilt who was a passenger on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by the Germans off the coast of Ireland in 1915; it is now lying in his safe in the wreck on the sea bottom.
Carver being indescribably rich takes them out on a ship to raise the Lusitania, but while Luke and Charlotte are exploring the raised wreck and finding the paining, Esme and thugs turn up by helicopter and fight them for it. Later, Esme consults with her superior (Stanley Tucci), part of a clandestine organisation of Protectors determined to keep people away from the Fountain of Youth because the human race is not yet highly evolved enough to deal with the consequences of partaking of its waters, which constitute a form of pure energy.
Charlotte’s custody battle is unexpectedly resolved when her husband, who works for Carver, accepts a year’s post abroad and gives the boy Thomas (Benjamin Chivers) into her care. Our heroes later discover the sixth letter on the back of the painting, but are unable to decode its meaning until Thomas, a musical prodigy studying at the Royal College of Music, tells them that the six letters are not in fact letters but music notes. This leads them to a rare surviving copy of the Wicked Bible (the infamous 1631 edition, in which “not” was left out of the seventh commandment to read, “Thou shalt commit adultery”) in a museum library in Vienna and thence to underneath a pyramid in Cairo where they believe the Fountain of Youth to be located…
As a high concept movie pitch, all this is impressive. This is intended as a lightweight caper, and there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that, if you can pull it off. The script is solid and serviceable, moving along at a good pace, the casting is decent, and the performances fine. Eiza González, doing her own stunts, surprises as a highly effective action protagonist, Gleason is particularly good as the well-heeled villain, while child actor Benjamin Chivers is memorable as Thomas. The art direction of the raised Lusitania sequence is a marvel…
And yet, the film is in trouble from the get-go. The opening car chase, which ought to be breathlessly exciting, just doesn’t work, as if the scenes weren’t properly blocked and the camera was never put in the right place. It’s not that there’s only one right way to do this stuff; any number of directors would have tackled it with different blocking, set-ups, and camera positions, but when a sequence like this ought to be exciting and thrilling but somehow isn’t, then you know that the wrong directorial decisions have been taken on the set during shooting.
Similar problems persist throughout, undermining all the major set pieces which are, basically, the raison d’être of the movie. One after another, these sequences just don’t work, and you wish someone else had been at the helm. The buck stops with the director. The film is more effective outside its action sequences – small groups of actors interacting in static locations – and the characters are engaging (as far as that goes). As a big, action-packed, globe-trotting romp, it fails to grab the attention at the start and, as set piece after set piece rolls by, never manages to rectify the problem. This had everything in place to be something very special, yet in Ritchie’s hands, it’s little beyond an annoying irritation. Avoid.
Fountain of Youth premieres globally on Apple TV+ from Friday, May 23rd.
Trailer: