Rent Wrath of Man (2021)

A totally pointless & uninspiring film with no redeeming elements whatsoever - Wrath of Man review by TB

When Guy Ritchie first cast Jason Statham in Lock Stock, he probably had no idea the fruitful partnership they would have, as well as the incredible career Statham would go on to enjoy. Now, 16 years after they worked together, they are back. The last film they made, Revolver, was an absolute car crash & received excoriating reviews. I myself could only get through about 25 minutes of it, it was that bad. Unfortunately, their new collaboration is equally as rubbish, albeit in a different way.

Wrath of Man is terrible, filled with characters you don't care about, given minimal backstory & thrust into the film. Statham plays a man called H, who joins a cash security transporting company and pretty quickly shows that he has unbelievable self-defence & weapon skills. The film then jumps back & forward in time, showing who H is & why he is where he is. But you just don't care, about any of it, at all. The motivations don't work, the story is ludicrous & you sit watching a bunch of characters you don't care about say terrible & bland dialogue to each other.

Then, for some inexplicable reason (although the movie is so terrible, it didn't really matter,) the film then goes completely left-field & spends most of the middle section with a totally different set of characters who have no introduction & again add nothing to the story. I was sat there just thinking "Why is this happening, why should I care about these people and how much longer until something interesting happens?"

But the biggest problem by a country mile is the tone & direction of the film, which is completely off. The reason that nothing works is because nothing rings true. You just watch basically a set of sequences, one after another, which are only tangentially connected by certain events which themselves don't click. Forget the old Guy Ritchie films like Snatch; this film has no humour, pacing or likeable people to root for.

When the final act arrives, I was just simply waiting for the film to end. You would think with the build-up to the big shootout, there would be something enjoyable, but it was just lots of shooting & deaths of characters I didn't care about. I had long given up expecting anything interesting. There was no payoff, no big reveal. It just ended & I wondered how this film got greenlit or who enjoyed watching it. A total & complete misfire.

Convoluted in an unnecessary way - Wrath of Man review by AER

This Guy Ritchie film is needlessly complicated. The framing of a simple revenge tale isn't the only thing that scuppers this potentially interesting Jason Statham starrer; what also ruined it is a poor script, flat characters and a miscast Statham. Nothing convinced me and everything felt laboured. The action sequences were slick but you had to wait 90 minutes for anything thrilling to happen. None of the cast seemed comfortable with a ropey script, I pitied Josh Hartnett who is just terrible in this. Eddie Marsan and Andy Garcia both struggle with weird accents too. So there's not much to say except the makers decided to build a maze in the middle of a very common or garden plot. Needed a better script and better performances (actors) for this to have worked. Even Den of Thieves and Ambulance were way better than this. PS: Wrath of Man was robbed of a cinema release in the UK because of the Covid epidemic...