Review: Guy Ritchie Directs Jason Statham In WRATH OF MAN
Guy Ritchie’s latest teaming with Jason Statham, Wrath Of Man is an energetic and well produced action film with which delivers enough bone-crunching thrills to keep fans of the genre happy. If you’re looking for plot and nuance, you might want to look elsewhere, but it’s a fun ride nonetheless.
Statham is the mysterious H, a new crew-member for an armoured car company, who gets a baptism of fire when his van gets hit when he first starts the job. However, the new boy has a special and very serious set of skills and he’s able to take-out the baddies in next to no time. There’s more to H than meets the eye – and he’s got his sights set on a group of hijackers who have wronged him in the past. They will feel his wrath.
As a director Guy Ritchie’s visual style can be a success (Snatch) or a a failure (King Arthur: Legend of the Sword) and this remake of the 2004 French film Cash Truck lands in the former category. It’s not perfect, but it does have enough visual verve and ingenuity to make it worth watching. A lot of this comes down to the strong supporting cast – Holt McCallany, Scott Eastwood, Jeffrey Donovan, Josh Hartnett, Niamh Algar, Eddie Marsan and Andy Garcia – who all manage to help elevate the material. As for Jason Statham – he just plays Jason Statham and if that’s your thing, then you’ll be more than happy.
Wrath Of Man has a very odd structure and this is something which hinders its narrative. It’s a film loaded with flashbacks, used to add complexity and mystery to the plot – something which is pointless if you’ve seen the trailer. It means that Statham ducks out of the film at the midway point and then he’s missing from the majority of the finale. It’s an odd creative choice, but the rest of the cast is more than able to pick up the slack. Wrath Of Man also has quite a few plot points which seem to evaporate into thin air without any resolution – something which implies quite a bit of story was left on the cutting room floor.
An unpretentious acton flick which looks and sounds good, Wrath Of Man is one of Jason Statham’s better genre efforts. It doesn’t make any sense, but it’s a fun way to spend a couple of hours.
