TEMPLE OF BOOM

GUY RITCHIE JOINS FORCES WITH JOHN KRASINSKI AND NATALIE PORTMAN FOR FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, A FANTASY-ADVENTURE FILM ABOUT ESTRANGED SIBLING TREASURE HUNTERS SEEKING THE FAMED ELIXIR TO ETERNAL LIFE

- WORDS: JAMES MOTTRAM

A GIANT URN, UPTURNED, DANGLES precariously over an enormous dais. John Krasinski, Natalie Portman and Domhnall Gleeson approach it watchfully. Then - out of nowhere - a broom prods this ancient artefact. Nothing like a bit of high-tech Hollywood magic, you might think. It gently starts to swing, and a huge noise comes over the speakers - BONG! - as if a giant gong has been struck. Everyone covers their ears, before the take comes to an end.

Director Guy Ritchie saunters over. “We're underneath the pyramids here,” he smiles, nodding to the vast room, “so we're five and a half thousand years old.” Well, almost. In truth, SFX is not in Egypt in the bowels of one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, but on a studio soundstage outside London. The film is Fountain Of Youth, Ritchie's latest big-scale spectacle, a rare dip into fantasy-adventure for the filmmaker, recently riding high on his Netflix crime yarn, The Gentleman.

“I've made it my business to try and embark upon genres I'm not familiar with,” explains Ritchie. “I thought I could do something challenging.” Scripted by James Vanderbilt (who penned the Andrew Garfield-era Spider-Man films and Zodiac), Fountain Of Youth is a throwback to a classic cinema staple: a rollicking fantasy-adventure cast in the spirit of Indiana Jones, King Solomon's Mines, The Da Vinci Code and Uncharted.

Intriguingly, our heroes are estranged siblings, Krasinski's Luke Purdue and his sister Charlotte, played by Portman. “I think for me, it was really this relationship [that gave it] a different twist, instead of a whole romance thing at the centre of the movie,” says Krasinski. “What I really liked was that family was this thing that we often forget about, and it might be the treasure that we're all really seeking in our lives. So that was really the thing that drew me in which Indy didn’t have. So there! We're ahead of