Wrath Of Man

Following on from the underwhelming results of 2020’s The Gentlemen Guy Ritchie has relocated his Biblically-overtoned follow-up, Wrath Of Man, from his home turf of London to Los Angeles, stripped his signature crime comedy style of its self-congratulatory cleverness, peppered it with a sprinkling of Tarantino-esque touches (some banter about polar bears and the use of chapter headings) and come up with a brutal but impressively taut revenge thriller.

Jason Statham plays a resolutely taciturn guard for an armored car company that moves millions in cash around L.A. every day. His supervisor Bullet (Holt McCallany) takes a bemused shine to his unrelieved surliness nicknaming him "H". During induction H appears to be quite ordinary but when he takes out six villains attempting to boost a lot of money from his van, barely working up a sweat in the process, his colleagues at Fortico feel that they haven’t got his full measure.  

Adapted by Ritchie and co-screenwriters Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies from a 2004 French film Le Convoyeur (aka "Cash Truck") which I have not seen I must say I had more than a little trouble in connecting the dots in a story which leaps back and forth in time.  

We are thrown straight into things with an armored car robbery which recalls Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) then follow the unfolding of three main narrative strands connected with Hill. The main action revolves around Hill’s job at Fortico, then there is a gang of disgruntled Iraqi Vets who plan to rob the Fortico depot. Then there is Hill’s own gang (this is where I struggled with the plot). And finally, Hill is somehow connected to the FBI (Andy Garcia acts as a kind of liaison officer/handler for Hill). Frankly this strand could have been entirely left out for all the difference it makes to the narrative.  .

Whether my confusion was exacerbated by the flip-flopping forward and back in time that goes on I cannot say but it does, as they say, keep you on your toes (for which flip-flops are, after all, just what you need). A considerable part of the film, in other words, seems to have been shaped by its editor, James Herbert.

To some extent this is not an issue as the principal appeal is the firearm-intense action realized particularly in the adrenaline pumping climactic depot heist. Cinematographer Alan Stewart works almost exclusively with a blue/black and grey to white palette accented with orange highlights (Hill claims to have previously worked at a security company called Delta Orange) creating a sombre foreboding tone which is well reinforced by Christopher Benstead’s lowering seven note cello motif which opens the film with its stylish credits and makes regular appearances thereafter.

Statham whose association with the director goes back to Ritchie’s 1998 debut Lock, Stock & two Smoking Barrels is a kind of East End Man With No Name (in one of Ritchie's winks to the audience the target of H’s vengeance is played by Scott Eastwood, Clint’s son) is the film's obsidian-hard  focal point. Most of the cast including a good-looking female blonde guard who never actually does anything, are largely unexplored although Holt McCallany is effective as H’s trainer and Eddie Marsan stands out a small role as an atypically timid office manager.

Although some will find it dramatically mono-dimensional Wrath of Man is very much in the tradition of ‘50s gangster B movies: blunt, hard and relentless and if that's what you're looking for Statham and Ritchie et al have done their job.well.

 

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