Typically, when an adventure movie places a woman in the role of skeptical naysayer, explaining at every turn why the leading man shouldn’t go on this risky journey, it’s a real drag, for both the movie and the actress forced to embody this killjoy construction. But when the woman is Natalie Portman and the man is John Krasinski, the dynamic shifts. It becomes easier to see her point—in the world of the movie, and subtextually, too. Maybe Charlotte Purdue (Portman) is right, and it doesn’t make much sense for her brother Luke (Krasinski) to go along with quest-funding billionaire Owen Carver (Domhnall Gleeson) to locate the real Fountain Of Youth—and while we’re at it, John Krasinski of The Office, maybe you shouldn’t attempt to locate your leading-man mojo as a bantering rogue adventurer. Maybe it will just come across as smug.
National Treasure indeed looms large over Fountain Of Youth, which also, of course, makes Ritchie’s film a copy-of-a-copy Indiana Jones. Krasinski doesn’t try to play Luke as rough-and-tumble as Harrison Ford or as goofily earnest as Nicolas Cage, instead aiming for something more confidently romantic about the fun of treasure-hunting. But that only means he’s miscast in a different key. Perhaps this isn’t fair to the actor (who had impeccable dad vibes in the Quiet Place movies he directed), but with Guy Ritchie at the helm and González on hand for her second of three Ritchie movies in a row, it’s hard not to think of how many better candidates to play Luke are sitting on the director’s increasingly large bench of frequent collaborators. Maybe Jason Statham is genuinely too old for this shit, but that still leaves Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Hartnett, and…Statham anyway?
Yet if Fountain Of Youth doesn’t quite rise to the level of the underseen, underheralded delight Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, it’s also several cuts above its streaming pedigree. Seemingly every major streamer has taken a crack at a vaguely retro, caper-driven action-adventure picture, and Ritchie may be the first one to get it mostly right. This could have been a fine actual summer movie, rather than an off-brand at-home alternative: There are genuine country-hopping locations, including Bangkok, Vienna, and the pyramids of Giza; well-appointed costumes and sets; and sufficiently ridiculous missions to undertake—at one point, the Lusitania is raised and re-sunk—before Eiza González and/or some heavily armed goons show up and up the spectacle. Working again with cinematographer Ed Wild, who also shot The Covenant and Ministry Of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Ritchie avoids the processed look of so many digitally shot globe-hoppers, with several greenish interiors and deep-black shadows that look, appropriately, like something out of an early-2000s Jerry Bruckheimer production.
That’s really what Ritchie seems to be after lately: bombast-lite Bruckheimer with a dash of ’60s-caper fleetness. In these later-period post-tentpole movies, he doesn’t exactly mount big set pieces; he just keeps unleashing zips and zaps of fisticuffs or gunplay. Maybe the action is his version of banter, making up for the synonym-heavy byplay of James Vanderbilt’s screenplay, which has a modest witticism hit rate. Ritchie seems extra juiced by the rep company he’s developing; here, if González is in motion, the camera will almost certainly pinwheel around in excitement in her vicinity. Maybe there’s nothing like a Disney remake to help you fall back in love with the simple pleasures of working with actors.
It’s nonetheless difficult to picture Krasinski or Portman signing up for another go-round in the Ritchie extended bloke-verse. (Laz Alonso already did Wrath Of Man, so maybe that’s why he’s OK with playing a team member whose job is mostly waiting outside whatever location the heroes are adventuring in.) Portman acquits herself charmingly, as she usually does in her occasional slumming blockbuster role; maybe she and Krasinski should have swapped parts. The erstwhile Jim Halpert isn’t even all that terrible here; at least he makes his character’s smarmy-doofus quality work for his non-relationship with Esme. The real star, though, is Ritchie’s unflagging spirit, as if chasing after bigger blockbusters in the 2010s led him to his own rejuvenating fountain.
Director: Guy Ritchie
Writer: James Vanderbilt
Starring: John Krasinki, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleeson, Arian Moayed, Laz Alonso, Carmen Ejogo, Stanley Tucci
Release Date: May 23, 2025 (Apple TV+)
