WRATH OF MAN
***
Director: Guy Ritchie
Screenplay: Guy Ritchie, Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, based on a script written by Nicolas Boukhrief and Éric Besnard.
Principal cast:
Jason Statham
Holt McCallany
Josh Hartnett
Jeffrey Donovan
Scott Eastwood
Eddie Marsan
Country: UK/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 118 mins.
Australian release date: 29 April 2021.
It’s been a while since Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie teamed up, not since 2005’s Revolver, in fact. Prior to that they collaborated on Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Now, with Wrath Of Man, they’ve joined forces again for a remake of the 2004 French film Le Convoyeur (Cash Truck) and it’s a suitable vehicle for their talents because there’s a lot of action, which Ritchie is an expert in directing, and Statham doesn’t have to say much, just shoot people, which matches his acting ability. Don’t get me wrong - he’s very good at brooding and looking tough but his range seems to be limited to these kinds of roles. Still, I guess when you’re on a good thing, the wise choice is to stick with it. Indeed, much the same could be said of Ritchie as a director. He is very good with this high-octane, Boy’s Own material so I guess he’s not going to turn his hand to other genres. Why would he?
When a mysterious man, Patrick Hill (Statham), joins a firm of armoured van guards at Fortico Securities in Los Angeles, ‘Bullitt’ (Holt McCallany) shows him the ropes. A gregarious guy, Bullitt says that he’s going to call the new man ‘H’, “like the bomb.” H is a man of few words and not exactly friendly but he soon earns his colleagues’ admiration when he foils an attempted robbery. Tongues start wagging, though, due to the ruthless way he dispatches the crew of would-be thieves, and the other guards start to speculate that there’s more to H than meets the eye. Then, when another robbery is abandoned mid-heist after one of the gunmen spies H, the rumour-mill really cranks up. The plot then jumps backwards and forwards in time as the real motive behind H’s employment at Fortico is revealed.
Ritchie has an interesting way of working with his usually large casts of many different characters; he puts them through what he calls the ‘Black Box’. This involves getting all his actors together and, over eight hours or so and with only limited sets and props, they perform the entire film in front of the cameras, creating a kind of rough draft of every scene. He explains: “What we try to do is create a roadmap that is not too definitive. I try with the actors on the day to improve the dialogue or the plot as much as we can. In my experience, that usually improves by about 15%. It makes it more challenging on the actor because the actor has to start to learn those new lines quickly. It keeps them on their toes, and it can be unnerving.” It’s an intriguing approach that certainly adds piquancy to the dialogue and it brings a kind of truth to the way that macho males interact with each other, what Ernest Hemingway called ‘the language of men.’
Wrath Of Man diverges slightly from Ritchie’s other films, in that, although it starts with his signature, blackly comic banter (even when the bullets are flying), in the second half it gets decidedly grim and the humour flies out the window. Divided into chapters, the screenplay keeps you guessing about H’s origins and intentions and, while it does, there’s enjoyment to be had. Once those things are exposed, however, the mystery elements are gone and we enter into pretty regular heist movie territory until it’s just a matter of time before the loose ends are wrapped up or, as U.S. military intelligence once infamously put it, “terminated with extreme prejudice.”
If you’re a fan of Guy Ritchie’s male-skewed oeuvre (there’s barely a woman in the entire movie), you’ll find something to get your adrenaline going in Wrath Of Man, but this is not one of the director’s better works, even with the return of Jason Statham.
Screenplay: Guy Ritchie, Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, based on a script written by Nicolas Boukhrief and Éric Besnard.
Principal cast:
Jason Statham
Holt McCallany
Josh Hartnett
Jeffrey Donovan
Scott Eastwood
Eddie Marsan
Country: UK/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 118 mins.
Australian release date: 29 April 2021.
It’s been a while since Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie teamed up, not since 2005’s Revolver, in fact. Prior to that they collaborated on Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. Now, with Wrath Of Man, they’ve joined forces again for a remake of the 2004 French film Le Convoyeur (Cash Truck) and it’s a suitable vehicle for their talents because there’s a lot of action, which Ritchie is an expert in directing, and Statham doesn’t have to say much, just shoot people, which matches his acting ability. Don’t get me wrong - he’s very good at brooding and looking tough but his range seems to be limited to these kinds of roles. Still, I guess when you’re on a good thing, the wise choice is to stick with it. Indeed, much the same could be said of Ritchie as a director. He is very good with this high-octane, Boy’s Own material so I guess he’s not going to turn his hand to other genres. Why would he?
When a mysterious man, Patrick Hill (Statham), joins a firm of armoured van guards at Fortico Securities in Los Angeles, ‘Bullitt’ (Holt McCallany) shows him the ropes. A gregarious guy, Bullitt says that he’s going to call the new man ‘H’, “like the bomb.” H is a man of few words and not exactly friendly but he soon earns his colleagues’ admiration when he foils an attempted robbery. Tongues start wagging, though, due to the ruthless way he dispatches the crew of would-be thieves, and the other guards start to speculate that there’s more to H than meets the eye. Then, when another robbery is abandoned mid-heist after one of the gunmen spies H, the rumour-mill really cranks up. The plot then jumps backwards and forwards in time as the real motive behind H’s employment at Fortico is revealed.
Ritchie has an interesting way of working with his usually large casts of many different characters; he puts them through what he calls the ‘Black Box’. This involves getting all his actors together and, over eight hours or so and with only limited sets and props, they perform the entire film in front of the cameras, creating a kind of rough draft of every scene. He explains: “What we try to do is create a roadmap that is not too definitive. I try with the actors on the day to improve the dialogue or the plot as much as we can. In my experience, that usually improves by about 15%. It makes it more challenging on the actor because the actor has to start to learn those new lines quickly. It keeps them on their toes, and it can be unnerving.” It’s an intriguing approach that certainly adds piquancy to the dialogue and it brings a kind of truth to the way that macho males interact with each other, what Ernest Hemingway called ‘the language of men.’
Wrath Of Man diverges slightly from Ritchie’s other films, in that, although it starts with his signature, blackly comic banter (even when the bullets are flying), in the second half it gets decidedly grim and the humour flies out the window. Divided into chapters, the screenplay keeps you guessing about H’s origins and intentions and, while it does, there’s enjoyment to be had. Once those things are exposed, however, the mystery elements are gone and we enter into pretty regular heist movie territory until it’s just a matter of time before the loose ends are wrapped up or, as U.S. military intelligence once infamously put it, “terminated with extreme prejudice.”
If you’re a fan of Guy Ritchie’s male-skewed oeuvre (there’s barely a woman in the entire movie), you’ll find something to get your adrenaline going in Wrath Of Man, but this is not one of the director’s better works, even with the return of Jason Statham.