2021 Reviews – Wrath of Man

Who’s excited for the new Guy Ritchie movie; Yaasss Queen! See, I just wanted to start this with review with a ‘Yaasss Queen’ because how many people do you think there are that are excited by Guy Ritchie movies and have a solid ‘Yaasss Queen’ in their repertoire? Funny thought, huh? Because when liking Guy Ritchie movies, you’re supposed to be tough! Suave! Masculine! In this movie, we are literally about to discover the ‘wrath of man’. I’m betting it’s fierce. Ladies and gentlemen; Wrath of Man.

Patrick “H” Hill (Jason Statham) joins a money-removal armoured truck service, where guards have to be ever vigilant and always run the risk of getting hijacked. Just three months ago, two officers were killed by thieves on a routine run. It doesn’t take long for H to run into trouble, but instead of backing down, H becomes an internal hero by taking on the hijackers and slaughtering them all. When his van is almost hit again, the perpetrators run away in terror. There must be more to H than he’s letting on; his superior, Terry (Eddie Marsan) is starting to wonder if he’s hired a ‘psychopath’, and I was starting to wonder that too.

To me, Wrath of Man smacks as a movie that fails to find the most effective way to tell its story. I want to say this movie is like when a journalist ‘buries the lead’, but this movie does lead with its strongest material before going and digging elsewhere. The first third is excellent, and anytime H is the depot guard, I am there. Problem is, there’s a good chunk of the movie where we are exploring other aspects of the story – the series of events that led up to H working as a transport guard, and the crew that’s planning to attack the depot, led by Jackson (Jeffery Donovan). Sometimes I bag movies for containing too many unanswered questions, but those movies are usually irritating because they rely on the mystery to keep an audience invested and offer little else, whereas the day-to-day of this money transporting service and comradery between the team, is super interesting alone – I love the way jerky employee ‘Boy Sweat’ Dave (Josh Hartnett) describes the danger of the job by expressing that they are the thankless middle-men, and quite often the prey. Obviously, the movie was going to touch on H’s past eventually; he was either taking on armed thieves for fun, or someone had pissed him off – I would’ve safely bet on the latter considering the movie is called Wrath of Man. But there’s something about a guy being great at his job, that I always find appealing; I know I’ve loved it before, with Spotlight and Moneyball obvious references. And if being good at the job means warding off would-be marauders with excellent marksmanship in this case, I’m down. In the early stages of this movie, H is just a hero because he’s a hero; that’s who he is, and all he needs to be. I’m sure there would be a way that we could have continued to follow H’s journey chronologically and understood his motivations at the same time. But instead, the movie spends its next third backtracking on a lukewarm backstory that completely detaches from what was making Wrath of Man great. And there came a time, where you could have honestly convinced me that I’d sleepwalked into an entirely different theatre. I get what Wrath of Man is trying to do; layer the narrative, so the first time we see the incident that kicks off our movie we are inside the truck, then as we go deeper, we get H’s perspective and then the perspective of our opportunistic bandits, but I don’t think it’s all that effective, and I wish the movie would have stayed in the pocket.

Wrath of Man also isn’t the usual fast-talking quick-witted caper we’ve come to expect from a Guy Ritchie movie, but I found there’s still enough quipping among drivers, especially in the first third 😏, to prompt a few chuckles on my behalf. There’s some really fancy scene transitioning as well, that had me getting all excited for a baller action thriller. Yet, as I’ve just written, this movie quickly morphs into something else, and with that goes any light-heartedness or really, any other signatures that usually make Ritchie the guy. The middle third could have been directed by anyone, and drags. I don’t know if it’s even very clear who H is in the criminal world – he’s the boss, and his crew also hit trucks (which is why H was getting burritos), but H also does under-the-table missionary work for the government as well? Credit where credit’s due, at least the movie does pick up again for the final siege. I liked the lowkey introduction to the action in the opening scene as well, from inside the truck that turns out to be meant to be from the guard’s perspective; but I’m not sure if it completely fits with the James-Bond-style opening credits that come next. One thing I’m confident Wrath of Man totally excels at though, is the score – it stands out prominently throughout the movie, and fits the menacing consistency of the truck job, along with H’s intensity; it is memorable, as I was still humming it for a few hours after I left the cinema. If you don’t like the score though, you’re going to be in for a rough time, because it is persistent.

I did have fun with Wrath of Man, but I don’t think it’s a particularly good movie – I’d put it in the same camp as Gemini Man. Why is it even called ‘Wrath of Man’? In the third act, it could just as easily be called ‘Greed of Man’, or something else, as the movie’s themes don’t slap hard enough for me to epitomise wrath. Regardless of the title, there’s a story here, but instead of wanting to follow it straight through, it’s like the movie takes the laboriously long route around the back, distracting itself. Even looking at the trailer as I write this review, it follows the events of the movie as they happen and it still feels like two different movies spliced together. I would have liked this movie so much more if it had followed the same structure as something like Bad Education, or even most recently, French Exit. At least Wrath of Man proves Jason Statham has still got it; he’s charismatic AF – and Snatch came out, what, twenty years ago; Statham looks like he’s hardly aged a day.

2.5