Review: Wrath of Man – ‘Guy Ritchie’s mid-career Renaissance continues’

Heat meets Takers meets John Wick.  Guy Ritchie’s ‘Wrath of Man’ jumps off the big screen as a Heist film with as many bullets-fired and twists-turned as the three great Heist films I listed off the top.

Guy Ritchie’s mid-career Renaissance follows up his 2019 hit ‘The Gentlemen’ with a pulse pounding, crime spree across Los Angeles; that will keep you guessing so much, you’ll need to see it a second time to fully absorb the entire story.

The Plot

Wrath of Man starts by showing us an Armored Car robbery from the point of view of the drivers. 

A Go Pro style camera shows us the heist in real time.  Construction equipment blocks the truck.  Robbers cut into the truck, deploy a flash bang grenade, and execute the drivers.  

No edits, no zooms, the whole job completed in a single take, in less than four minutes.

Days later, Terry, played by Eddie Marsan, interviews replacement drivers.  Patrick Hill, or simply ‘H’, played by Jason Statham, quickly gets the job.  ‘Bullet’, played by Holt McCallany, trains H and quickly gets him out in the field.  Though somehow, the seemingly over-qualified H, barely passes his shooting test.

The next day, Bullet, H, and ‘Boy Sweat’ Dave, played by Josh Hartnett, run into trouble.  Bullet gets detained, Dave panics, and H is left to take over.

The robbers instruct H to toss the bags of cash into the bed of a truck.  H coyly misses, frustrating the robbers.  H slowly tosses the second bag, hiding his gun underneath.  Seconds later, all five robbers are dead.

Back at Fortico Security, H receives a hero’s welcome.  But, some wonder, how did a guy who barely passed his shooting test easily eliminate five armed attackers?

The Good

Writer/Director/Producer Guy Ritchie’s remake of Nicolas Boukhrief’s ‘Le Convoyeur’ keeps you guessing throughout.  

H clearly has more experience than an entry level truck driver.  The FBI agents investigating the shooting are told to back off of H by their boss, played by Andy Garcia.  Even the lone female driver, Dana, is revealed to be a non-violent thief after she seduces H, and he puts two shots into her couch during a post-romp interrogation.

The pace flows briskly through the first hour of the film.  All three heists in the first half hour are unique and told from a different perspective each time.  We see the film through H’s eyes, yet we know very little about him.  Even when a woman gives him an extensive dossier, we don’t know quite where H is coming from.  Clearly, H is great at his job, even if we don’t know what that is.

Five months later, H reluctantly takes his adult son on a supposedly ‘easy’ job.  Easy that is, until H watches Jan, played by Scott Eastwood, shoot his son in the back of the head, and look him straight in the eye as he does it.

It’s in H’s grief and quest for vengeance, that we meet his team of criminals.  With the blessing of the FBI’s Agent King, H goes on a bloody rampage through the Los Angeles criminal underground in a quest to find the man who pulled the trigger.

The violence is so bloody and ruthless, even H’s top lieutenant advises him to stop.

The Bad

Wrath Of Man is solid beginning to end.  Like many Guy Ritchie films, it enjoys a quick pace and quirky characters, without losing focus or intensity in the process.

Also, like many Guy Ritchie films, that speed and layering can make it challenge to absorb all of the detail and nuance in one viewing.  This is definitely a film you will need to watch a second time to catch everything.  Even I, as a reviewer, will need to watch Wrath a second time to catch everything.

While this is more of a critique than a true weakness, some people may find that Guy Ritchie energy and style a bit much to absorb the first time through.

The Review

The second hour of Wrath of Man flips the script.  We see the events of the first hour from the robbers point of view, a group of ex-military soldiers bored with civilian life.

The point of view is seen from Sergeant Jackson, played by Jeffrey Donovan, and Jan, played by Scott Eastwood.  We see the first hour of the film re-told from their perspective, before leading to an epic half hour heist to cap the film.  The scope and scale of the action takes an even bigger step up, without losing focus.

The action is well designed, and shot and edited extremely well.   Especially during the final heist, we have parallel timelines seemlessly edited together to tell a single story.

The cast mixes familiar faces and unknowns, with a story that will keep you guessing until the end.  A much darker film than the usual Guy Ritchie fare, but still featuring the energy and forward momentum we’re used to seeing.  Think a 90’s Jerry Bruckheimer version of Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’, just with cool British accents. 

First good movie of the 2021 Summer Movie Season!  Go see it!

Rated R, 118 Minutes, Action, Thriller, Heist

Additional Information

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11083552/

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