Musts and Misses: What to see (and skip) this week

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

(In theaters now)

STX Films

Guy Ritchie makes all kinds of movies now, a diversified portfolio of saucy Victorian detectives, blue genies, and Arthurian kings. But his heart (or at least some throbbing body part) still seems to remain with the blithe, bloody crime capers that made his name.

Either that, or he just had some unproofed dough left over from his 2019 action comedy The Gentlemen and decided to make another one: Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre is, despite its flowery French title, a highly standard Ritchie joint, full of movie stars and exotic locales and Jason Statham cheerfully punching people in the throat.

Statham is Orson Fortune, a man so good at catching criminals and cracking international conspiracies that the British government (represented here by a fussy, dapper Cary Elwes and the consistently great Eddie Marsan) gladly keeps him in private jets and five-figure bottles of Cabernet. But when a rogue group of Ukranians steal some crucial piece of world-ending technology, he's forced to collaborate with a motley crew that includes a relentlessly droll Aubrey Plaza as, essentially, herself with a CIA badge, and the British actor-rapper Bugzy Malone.

Globe-trotting tomfoolery ensues, in ways never quite as witty or engaging as you want them to be, though Hugh Grant and Josh Hartnett bring a certain insouciant zing as, respectively, a hedonistic arms dealer with a weakness for Hollywood glamour, and the American action star used as bait to lure him in. Bones snap, banter flies; things and people explode without consequence. And Statham, squinting manfully into the void, walks away unscathed, keen to throat-punch another day. Grade: C+ —Leah Greenblatt

Daisy Jones & the Six

(First three episodes now streaming on Prime Video, new episodes streaming Fridays)

Lacey Terrell/Prime Video Riley Keough and Sam Claflin as Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne

Taylor Jenkins Reid's bestselling novel about a fictional band's rise and fall becomes a classic-rock soap opera in this mild yet charming miniseries. Riley Keough is perfectly cast as Daisy Jones, a Sunset Stripling raised in loveless Hollywood luxury who becomes a bold, hedonistic, and cheerfully self-destructive singer-songwriter.

Sam Claflin can't compete for wildness as her eventual songwriting (and romantic?) partner Billy Dunne, but his default pained expression serves a different purpose. Billy spirals out of control before his band even gets famous, and he's a family man out of rehab by the time trusty producer Teddy (Tom Wright) pairs him up with the pill-popping Daisy. Their collaboration leads to fame and artistic excitement — but could also tear themselves and their band apart.

The book was an oral history, a structure the show awkwardly reformats into an unconvincing faux-documentary. This means thirtysomething actors play dreamy '70s youth and middle-aged interviewees: a lot of bad wigs. But the other actors in the band are quite charming (especially Suki Waterhouse as a rad keyboardist and Sebastian Chacon as the happy-to-be-here drummer). The '70s Los Angeles setting is very evocative. And Timothy Olyphant has a great time as a world-weary tour manager. I grooved on Daisy Jones's easy listening. Grade: B+ —Darren Franich

Read EW's full review here

Creed III

(In theaters now)

Eli Ade/MGM

If there is a sweet science to sports movies, it's simplicity. Formula isn't just a selling point, it's what we came for: Give us long odds and underdogs, adversity and triumph; let the details sweat the rest.

Even Rocky, it turns out, can transcend its own Balboa: Nine films in, Creed III is the first not to feature Sylvester Stallone in any role (the actor has been vocal about his reasons for cutting ties with the franchise). Instead, the movie now belongs on both sides of the camera to Michael B. Jordan, the alternately tender and ferocious actor who returns as boxing's prodigal son Adonis Creed, and also makes his feature directing debut.

His Donnie is a happily settled family man putting the fight behind him now, content to go out on top in his mid-thirties with his record intact. He still lives in a whitewashed modernist villa overlooking Los Angeles with his bohemian singer-songwriter wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson) and their young deaf daughter (Mila Davis-Kent), with whom he sweetly banters in ASL; his late father's widow, Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), drops by regularly for Merlot and moral support.

But when a childhood friend, Damian "Dame" Anderson (Jonathan Majors) suddenly reenters his life, still seething over an long-ago wrong that only he paid the price for and eager to get back in the ring, the lure of retirement fades. Can the erstwhile champ get back into battle mode and beat the man he once considered a brother? Should he? Adonis wears snow-white satin to their climactic face-off, and Dame is in all black, a clarity of messaging which generally suffuses the rest of the movie; shades of gray do not apply.

The screenplay, by Zach Baylin (King Richard) and Keenan Coogler, hits most of its narrative notes with a straight uppercut while Jordan and Majors stomp and fume like raging bulls, consumed by their singular purpose. Majors, already seemingly inescapable this year, brings a wounded menace that suggests the many sedimentary layers of fury and grief underneath; he's less some sneering Iron Curtain meathead á la Rocky villains of yore than a lost soul. It's still Creed's name that's on the movie poster, though, and his championship belt to claim. Would we have it any other way? Grade: B —Leah Greenblatt

Related content:

• The Gentlemen star Charlie Hunnam talks reuniting with Guy Ritchie, flirting with Hugh Grant

• How being Elvis' granddaughter influenced Riley Keough's take on rock star Daisy Jones

• Jonathan Majors on Heath Ledger's Joker and creating complex villains for Creed and Ant-Man