Film Review: Wrath of Man
Guy Ritchie, Deconstructed
English filmmaker Guy Ritchie goes back to basics with the ruthless and bloody Wrath of Man. Stripping the film of his typical panache save for a few hallmark favorites, including Jason Statham in premium ass-kicking mode, Ritchie delivers a no-frills tale of revenge that’s just a little less than the sum of its parts. Minor spoilers ahead…
Guy Ritchie has spent the last decade or so of his career putting his trademark spin on big-budget revivals. A far cry from his typical fare of boisterous, violent, and unapologetically British crime sagas, the filmmaker’s recent projects have tackled Sherlock Holmes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., King Arthur, and even a Disney remake with the live-action Aladdin. And if 2020’s The Gentlemen was a return to his roots - a lá Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels - then his new film, Wrath of Man, is a deconstruction of his entire oeuvre. A remake of Nicolas Boukhrief’s Cash Truck from 2004, Wrath of Man finds Ritchie at his least Ritchie. Keeping only the things that he seemingly can’t leave behind - byzantine time-jumps, stylized shoot 'em ups, and Jason Statham - Ritchie has crafted his leanest and most ruthless film yet, even if it isn’t his best.
Centered around the mysterious Patrick Hill (Statham), dubbed “H” by his colleagues, Wrath of Man explores a straight-as-an-arrow revenge flick narrative. A new crew member for an armored truck security company, H is thrown into a sobering trial by fire when his convoy is hit during one of his first jobs. Surprising his cohorts with a brutal set of skills and ruthless efficiency that quickly dispatches the would-be robbers, it becomes increasingly clear that there’s more to H than meets the eye. To say much more would be going into spoiler territory, but H’s backstory - and the details behind his scorched earth quest for bloody satisfaction - are slowly revealed through Ritchie’s signature puzzle box storytelling.
“Keeping only the things that he seemingly can’t leave behind - namely, byzantine time-jumps, stylized shoot 'em ups, and Jason Statham - Ritchie has crafted his leanest film yet, even if it isn’t his best.”
What can only be described as a streamlined amalgamation of Payback, Armored, and Den of Thieves, Wrath of Man plumbs the depths of guilty-pleasure action cinema and heist capers: there’s brooding, there’s a heaping of gunplay, and there’s a hefty body count to boot. And to make things interesting, concurrently to H’s armored truck antics, the film splits its focus with a crew (Jeffrey Donovan, Laz Alonso, Chris Reilly, Scott Eastwood) of precise and ambitious thieves as they plan a trope-y “job to end all jobs,” only to collide all of the film’s various criminal threads into a massive, final bloodbath.
Singular in its pleasures, Wrath of Man doesn’t tax Jason Statham - nor its storytelling muscles - much. One really wonders why Wrath of Man was chosen as the new title when the original Cash Truck is much more apt in conveying the film’s blunt appeal, but in a subdued, almost workmanlike approach, it’s a little refreshing - if not odd - to see Ritchie pull back the reins of his typical bombast. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still the brimming cauldron of toxic machismo, mostly in the form of H’s coworkers - Bullet (Holt McCallany), Boy Sweat Dave (a nervous and squirrelly Josh Hartnett, playing against type), and Terry (Eddie Marsan), but his most grating - and oftentimes problematic - tendencies are placed on hold to deliver Wrath’s streamlined ode to action cinema.
“One really wonders why Wrath of Man was chosen as the new title when the original Cash Truck is much more apt in conveying the film’s blunt appeal…”
But there are also plenty of things that don’t quite work. Wrath of Man’s labyrinth of time shenanigans, which Ritchie just can’t seem to quit, hurts more than it helps. A series of cuts and flashbacks telegraph a curious secret, but the film’s manipulation with time is mostly a dud - a choppy maze leading to an empty trove. In fact, Wrath of Man hits almost all of its beats on the path of familiarity, it’s big “twist” is almost no twist at all, and you’ll likely peer through its predictable ending way before the horizon is even in sight.
Wrath of Man won’t be taking the action genre to new heights, or a new destination of any kind, but it’s crafted satisfyingly enough with Jason Statham in mind to cut his bloody swath of vengeance. Its concise heist choreography and its unrelenting ruthlessness, accompanied by composer Christopher Benstead’s (Aladdin) haunting seven-note leitmotif, carries the film and its unnecessarily janky structure. Guy Ritchie has yet to rediscover the sure footing in between Snatch and Aladdin that was the criminally underrated The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but Wrath of Man is the good ol’ college try, and something that caper aficionados will likely eat right up.
