**Guy Ritchie’s ‘Fountain of Youth’ Falls Short Despite Solid Action Sequences**

*Fountain of Youth* Is a Slick Adventure That Forgets to Matter**
*Guy Ritchie Delivers Action, But Not Much Else*

With *Fountain of Youth*, director Guy Ritchie proves he’s grown — at least a little. Gone are the indulgent stylistic tics that once defined (and often derailed) his early work: no needless slow-motion, no gratuitous overhead camera whirls. The action here is clean, competent, and largely unfussy. That’s progress.

But Ritchie’s long-standing Achilles' heel remains painfully intact: his inability — or disinterest — in directing actors. In this globe-trotting treasure-hunt adventure, John Krasinski, Eiza González, and Natalie Portman all flounder, delivering some of the flattest performances of their careers.

Krasinski plays Luke, a rogue adventurer introduced while fleeing machine-gun-toting gangsters through the streets of Bangkok — all while smiling like he’s on a beer commercial. He aims for rakish charm but lands on hollow geniality. González’s performance, pitched as fierce and driven, instead reads as grim and one-dimensional. And Portman, saddled with a role so thankless it borders on sabotage, spends most of the film warning everyone of danger — and doing little else.

Either Ritchie actively steered his stars into these uninspired corners or left them to flail unsupervised. Whatever the case, the result is a film where characters feel like cardboard, and the stakes never register. If we don’t care about the people, we won’t care about the action — no matter how well it's staged.

The story follows the increasingly tired template of a team chasing mysterious MacGuffins — in this case, Renaissance paintings that contain clues to the titular Fountain of Youth. At the request of a dying billionaire (Domhnall Gleeson), Luke assembles a band of globe-trotting “fun geniuses” to hunt down art, decipher riddles, and, yes, dredge up the Lusitania.

Each new locale — Vienna, Egypt, Italy — offers another set piece and another round of the same tiresome loop: a heist, a warning from Portman’s fretful sister character, more heisting, another warning. Rinse and repeat.

The screenplay, by James Vanderbilt (*Zodiac*, *White House Down*), is serviceable but uninspired. There’s a late-breaking moment of intrigue when the film finally reveals its take on the mythical fountain — it’s clever and offers a glimpse of what might have been. But that spark arrives around minute 110 of a 117-minute movie. It’s too little, too late.

As for why Portman signed on — your guess is as good as ours. Maybe she just wanted a working vacation. The film certainly feels like one: a chance to shoot across Europe, go through the motions, and cash a paycheck.

Ultimately, *Fountain of Youth* is a technically competent, emotionally vacant ride — a film that moves quickly but never goes anywhere.