I wonder if Guy Ritchie is in something of a mid-life crisis these days. After failing to replicate the success of Sherlock Holmes with his horrible 2017 King Arthur reimagining, he took the easy-hit Disney job of Aladdin which set him up financially to do whatever he wanted. Last years’ The Gentlemen was a nostalgic return to his early British gangster film roots, only not an iota as good. Wrath of Man though is something a little different from any movie he’s done previously, which perhaps says something about where he is as a filmmaker now. As such it’s a fascinating movie, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘good’.
Certainly it’s better than anything Ritchie has made since The Man from U.N.C.L.E; but it is often tough to digest and without the substance to back its’ philosophically provocative title. That title was changed from Cash Truck, the name of the 2004 French film that it is a remake of. Ritchie’s version is quite bleak though, to the point of rendering a title that silly tonally incongruent. Funnily, it would have suited an ordinary Guy Ritchie movie perfectly well (remembering that he made a film called RocknRolla); but Wrath of Man is deliberately not an ordinary Guy Ritchie movie -at least not as much as Ritchie can help.
On one level it is consistent with his formulas: it’s narrative is yet another that incorporates nonlinear storytelling and depicting the same critical moment from multiple vantage points revealing its’ complexity. And the plot is very much Ritchie-friendly in its’ multiple factions of terrible people engaged in a big crime enterprise. At the centre of it is the brooding Patrick “H” Hill, played by Jason Statham, reuniting for the first time in sixteen years with the director who launched his career. H joins a “cash truck” company, a heavily armed security organization tasked with moving mass amounts of cash around Los Angeles that is often the target of gangs and local terrorists; and it soon becomes clear he has ulterior motives for this job, as layers are peeled back on his backstory, an elaborate scheme of revenge is revealed, and the other players involved make their move.
What is unusual for Ritchie though is how scaled back a lot of this is. Most of his familiar stylistic and technical tricks are nowhere to be seen, the pace and rhythm of the piece a lot slower than anything he’s done previously, and while seediness is no stranger to him, its’ character is so much grimmer and humourless here. His gangster scenes in this film are dark and genuinely uncomfortable in a way those in his previous movies never were. And unlike something like The Gentleman, which on some level seemed unaware of how sociopathic its’ characters were, here Ritchie is unafraid to portray his protagonist as an unambiguous antihero -a bad guy in spite of a noble motive very much in the spirit of an old Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson type. To some degree it’s impressive for Ritchie, but the bleakness does work against the movie considerably in other regards -often where it feels like just empty nihilism. And some of the harshest scenes are just exploitative -especially one awful torture sequence followed by a detour into a den of sex trafficking. And while Ritchie has avoided the appalling racism of The Gentlemen, there’s a lot of casual homophobia that doesn’t seem entirely warranted. The toxic machismo in each sphere of the story is not really saying anything, so it just exists as a garnish to further reinforce how unpleasant everybody is. And thus how little you should care about any of them.
Statham has never been a good actor, but Ritchie if anybody knows how to utilize him effectively -as he did in his first two films. H though, is really interchangeable with any other Statham character of the last couple decades. To some that may not be a problem, but I find that his particular gruff English tough-bloke routine gets tiring after a while. There is some better acting around him though. Jeffrey Donovan continues to radiate a natural creepiness, even as just the leader of an ex-military gang of thugs, which lends him some menace where the character otherwise wouldn’t have any. Scott Eastwood is quite good as maybe the worst person in a movie full of despicable people, and though I’ve never seen her before, Niamh Algar makes quite an impression as the movies’ sole female character of note -even if the part is substantially underwritten. Alternatively, Josh Hartnett gets to play the only cash truck driver with a personality, the aptly named ‘Boy Sweat Dave’.
There’s no such charm to the action scenes, which retain the rest of the movies’ bitterness. They’ve got a certain intensity, notably the long climactic one that is built up rather well and (in Ritchie fashion) is cut against the heist being planned; but it’s still not all that visually interesting or dynamic. Eventually the violence, though not terribly graphic, just becomes numbing. Even Statham’s righteous anger doesn’t give the sequence much life or the situation any real catharsis. His resolution instead comes later in a scene of vengeance that is curiously muted and not all that satisfying. Whether this is an intentional statement on the futility of revenge is unclear and perhaps depends on how much trust you have in Ritchie’s capacity for deeper thought on such subjects. For me I think it’s not beyond the scope of reason that it was deliberate, especially in this movie’s context, but it could also just be a fluke.
The opening titles to Wrath of Man are actually an incredibly engaging display of elaborate effects work and striking relevant imagery on par with (and noticeably emulating) those of the Bond movies. I noticed this with The Gentlemen too, and it seems to be a new Guy Ritchie staple –one that is rather welcome if he does indeed continue forth without his usual toolbox: an endeavour I respect, even if I don’t think it entirely works in Wrath of Man. Maybe he just needs to get away from some of these same themes and crime settings (by which I don’t mean he should go back to adapting IP!). Clearly this is where he’s most comfortable though.
And yet his next movie, already shot (and with Statham and Hartnett again), is a spy film called Five Eyes -certainly not of the ilk of Wrath of Man. His last good movie was a spy film too. Perhaps there is reason to be hopeful for this crass and irrepressible Limey.
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