Director – Guy Ritchie, Screenplay – James Vandebilt, Producers – Ivan Atkinson, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Jake Myers, Paul Neinstein, Guy Ritchie, William Sherak, James Vanderbilt & Tripp Vinson, Photography – Ed Wild, Music – Chris Benstead, Visual Effects Supervisor – Pete Bebb, Visual Effects – Digital Domain (Supervisor – Jay Barton), Double Negative (Supervisors – Bryan Litson, Aleks Pejic & Shailendra Swarnkar), Host VFX, Outpost VFX (Supervisor – Laurent Gillet) & Weta FX Ltd (Supervisor – Ken McGaugh), Special Effects Supervisor – Mark Holt, Production Design – Martyn John. Production Company – Skydance/Vinson Films/Project X Entertainment/Toff Guy Films.
Cast
John Krasinski (Luke Purdue), Natalie Portman (Charlotte Purdue), Eiza Gonzalez (Esme), Domhnall Gleeson (Owen Carver), Adrian Moayed (Inspector Jamal Abbas), Laz Alonso (Patrick Murphy), Carmen Ejogo (Deb McCall), Benjamin Chivers (Thomas), Stanley Tucci (The Elder), Steve Tran (Kasem), Daniel De Bourg (Harold), Michael Epp (Praeger), Elly Condron (Head Librarian), Anthony Bunsee (Professor Bishara)
Plot
Luke Purdue is an archaeologist who has become an art thief wanted by international authorities. He visits his sister Charlotte, a museum curator in London, but this is a ruse to steal a Rembrandt from among the exhibits. Luke insists Charlotte come with him to meet billionaire Owen Carver. He explains that Carver is suffering from cancer and is backing Luke’s search for the mythical Fountain of Youth. The fountain’s whereabouts has been guarded for centuries by a secret group of Protectors who are assigned by The Vatican. However, a series of cryptic clues to its whereabouts have been hidden inside works of art. Having been fired from her job, Charlotte is persuaded to join Luke’s expedition in tracking the last clues. This takes them from the raising of the wreck of the Lusitania off the Irish coast to Vienna and Cairo. All the while they are pursued by the Protector agent Esme, Interpol and the thugs sent by a Thai gangster who want back a painting that Luke stole.
The idea of the Fountain of Youth, where one can supposedly be rejuvenated after bathing in its waters, goes all the way back to the Roman writer Herodotus in the 5th Century B.C and has appeared in stories attributed to Alexander the Great and others. The historic figure it has been most associated with the Fountain of Youth is the Conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon during his explorations of the Caribbean in the early 16th Century. Ponce de Leon’s search for Bimini (the supposed location of the Fountain) is said to have led him to the discovery of Florida in 1513.
The Fountain of Youth has appeared on film before in works like Hurricane Island (1951) about Ponce de Leon, The Fat Spy (1966), The Spring (1990), a film about tracing the source of the fountain from Ponce de Leon’s diary, The Spring (2000), Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) and another unrelated film called The Fountain of Youth (2021), as well as episodes of tv’s Fantasy Island (1977-84), MacGyver (1985-92), Charmed (1998-2006) and Relic Hunter (1999-2002).
British director Guy Ritchie is best known for his men’s men films. Ritchie started out with a series of films set around East End London gangster culture with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch. (2000), Revolver (2005) and RocknRolla (2008). The 2000s and 2010s saw Ritchie expanding beyond that with the bomb of the romance Swept Away (2002) starring then wife Madonna; Sherlock Holmes (2009) and sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), which turned the famous detective into one of Ritchie’s roughneck pugilists; The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015) adapted from the 1960s tv series; his overblown take on the Arthurian legends with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017); the live-action remake of Disney’s Aladdin (2019); and more recently the ensemble capers Wrath of Man (2021), Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023) and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024).
(l to r) Eiza Gonzalez, John Krasinski and Natalie Portman at the Pyramids
Fountain of Youth is Guy Ritchie making an Indiana Jones-styled Adventure Film. The film was given a budget of $180 million and Ritchie shoots in international locations ranging from London, Liverpool, Vienna, Bangkok and Cairo. A few years ago, this would have been a big theatrical release, whereas now Fountain of Youth was released straight to streaming on Apple+.
In dipping his toes into the adventure film, Ritchie and screenwriter James Vanderbilt spend most of their time homaging other films in the genre. The homage to the Indiana Jones films are obvious, while the climax where the artefact is uncovered and causes the villain to undergo a meltdown is a blatant lift from the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). The quest for clues hidden in works of art and Eiza Gonzalez as a Vatican appointed enforcer ruthlessly pursuing them is a blatant steal from The Da Vinci Code (2006). The scene where John Krasinski steals a painting from the museum is a clear borrowing from The Thomas Crown Affair (1999).
There seems a particular homage to the Dirk Pitt books of Clive Cussler. John Krasinski takes Natalie Portman on a high-speed chase through the streets of London in an AC Shelby Cobra sports car, which Pitt is said to drive in several of the Cussler novels. More crucially, the film recycles the entire plot of Cussler’s Raise the Titanic! (1976), later filmed as Raise the Titanic (1980), with the scenes where the team salvage the wreck of the Lusitania using flotation devices to raise it to the surface in order to obtain a treasure hidden in the vaults. (While in the book and film, the raising of the Titanic is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that takes months and has a high international profile, here the salvage appears to be conducted in about five minutes flat with nobody except the bad guys noticing).
(l to r) John Krasinski, Domhnall Gleeson and Natalie Portman go tomb raiding
One of the interesting aspects of the script is that it ties in a number of existing references to historical incidents and artworks, including the Wicked Bible (which, as is explained, was one that omitted the ‘not’ in “Thou Shelt Not Commit Adultery”), assorted artworks and the sinking of the Lusitania. The interesting thing about the Lusitania is that it is mentioned in reference to Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt – the great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest person in the USA during the Gilded Age – who died aboard the Lusitania. The film is written by James Vanderbilt, the great-grandson of Alfred, who has a reasonable career as a screenwriter (see below for James Vanderbilt’s other credits).
Guy Ritchie offers a film that is like a junkfood meal that can be easily digested, satisfies the tastebuds while it is being consumed and can be forgotten the moment it is over. The action scenes pass by engagingly enough without any of them being memorable. For me, what failed to resonate was John Krasinski cast in the sort of role that would be inhabited by Harrison Ford. Krasinski just seems too much of an inoffensive nice guy to believably inhabit the part of a grizzled adventurer, let alone an international art thief on the run from multiple law enforcement agencies.
The other distracting aspect of this is that all of Krasinski’s dialogue exchanges with Natalie Portman and Eiza Gonzalez are written as cocky, flip banter – the sort of snappy one-liners that exists in a scriptwriter’s fantasy rather than the sort of exchanges that real people have. Contrast the relationship between John Krasinski and Eiza Gonzalez here with the one between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen in Raiders – they are both firing off snappy lines at one another but in Raiders you can see two characters connecting and an attraction, here it feels like there is nothing more than the retorts that drive a scene. As per any romantic relationship on screen in the 2020s, Krasinski and Eiza spend the whole time flirting without ever connecting and their parting is merely a promise of her to keep pursuing him.
