On May 23, Apple TV+ released the action-adventure film «Fountain of Youth» with a star-studded cast — John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Domhnall Gleeson and Eiza Gonzalez. Guy Ritchie, who has been demonstrating phenomenal productivity lately, takes the director’s chair — this is the British filmmaker’s seventh film in six years, and he has also worked on the TV series «The Gentlemen» (2024) and «MobLand» (2025). «Fountain of Youth» positioned by a director as «a movie in the spirit of Indiana Jones», only the events are brought to the present day. We will tell you what this streaming novelty offers the viewer in the review below.
Genre adventure action
Director Guy Ritchie
Starring John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Domhnall Gleeson, Eiza Gonzalez, Laz Alonso, Carmen Ejogo, Stanley Tucci, Arian Moayed
Premiere Apple TV+
Year of release 2025
Website IMDb, official website
Luke Purdue, a seeker of adventure and ancient artifacts, and just a regular adventurer, set out to find the mythical Fountain of Youth. To be more precise, he was prompted to do so by a moneybag, the terminally ill Owen Carver, who does not give up hope of prolonging his rapidly fading life. For help, Luke turns to his sister Charlotte, who has long since abandoned Indian country and plunged into the maelstrom of ordinary life — boring work in a London gallery, divorce, raising a son. But the woman does not express a great desire to return to her past life.
Meanwhile, Luke and his team are pursued by the mysterious beauty Esme, who is trying her best to prevent the discovery of the location of the legendary spring, as well as the presentable Interpol agent Jamal Abbas. Thai thugs also intervene in the case, because Luke has stolen a valuable item from their boss. Fasten your seat belts, the adventure begins!
Although, in fact, you don’t need to buckle up — it’s been a long time since there was such a bland, weak, boring, and helpless adventure movie. Watching the movie, one gets the impression that some evil force has sucked all the creative energy out of Guy Ritchie, and in this exhausted state he started working on the film. And how can we not mention the factor of the director’s extraordinary activity recently, which has clearly played a role — when you produce an impressive quantity, the quality will certainly suffer.
It would seem that «Fountain of Youth» had all the prerequisites for success.
He is a well-known director with a number of successful and even cult films under his belt. Experienced screenwriter James Vanderbilt, who, for example, wrote the script for Fincher’s «Zodiac» (2007), and who has worked on adventure films after working on «The Rundown» (2003), is not the first to turn to adventure cinema. The cast is truly stellar, attracting the attention of the average viewer by its very presence. After all, the patronage of the moneyed Apple, when there is no need to complain about the lack of budget. But for some reason, the presence of all these elements did not lead to a sane result.
Of the things that can be admired in the film, we note the scene of the raising of the «Lusitania» from the seabed, which was sunk in the Celtic Sea by the German submarine U-20 in 1915, as well as the more or less lively final act, where there is both action and some thrill at the discovery. Otherwise, «Fountain of Youth» is a continuous, meaningless chatter, albeit from very pleasant and well-recognizable people.
The «Lusitania» disaster is also worth mentioning here. It turns out that the local screenwriter’s paternal great-grandfather, businessman Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt Sr., was on board the shipwreck. He gave his life jacket to a woman with a small child, despite the fact that he did not know how to swim. The businessman’s body was never found. And even this heroic story sounds more interesting than what Vanderbilt’s descendant offers on the screen.
«Fountain of Youth» can only entertain you if you’ve never seen any of the «Indiana Jones» installments — the authors wink at the cult series by naming the main characters’ father Harrison (although there’s no despair, unlike Lara Croft there’s no sense of grief over the loss of dad here). Or if you are completely unfamiliar with «National Treasure» or «The Da Vinci Code». Here, encrypted messages in the works of art of great painters — Rembrandt, Velazquez, Rubens, Caravaggio, etc. play a key role in the search. At the same time, it will not be difficult to predict future events if you are one of those people who regularly watch movies in principle.
As for the characters, John Krasinski looks good as Indiana Jones 2.0, but he doesn’t show anything special. There’s not much to say about the rest of the cast. The star performers have essentially nothing to play. The opposition of the brother and sister characters does not evoke any emotions, and the pseudo-antagonism with Eiza Gonzalez’s character does not stand up to any criticism — and who pays her for her continuous failures? What about the Interpol agent or the hero Laz Alonso (if his face looks familiar, he was in «The Boys»), it’s better not to mention them at all, they were so faded.
This sluggish movie is decidedly lacking in energy, creativity, and a vivid adventure component. Instead, we have to be content with endless dialogues of a far from Tarantino-esque nature and the expected twists and turns that exist purely for show.
As a result, the screening costs the viewer the time spent ineffectually in front of the screen, when each of us has aged two hours, which no one will ever get back.
