Rent Wrath of Man (2021)

Polished Yet Routine Crime Thriller - Wrath of Man review by GI

Director Guy Ritchie and star Jason Statham sort of made each others careers or at least increased their bank balances together and they have reached a point where both need a to regain some originality. This is a gutsy thriller that reunites them although it plays more like one of Statham's exploitation violent B movies than the laddish, cockney crime capers that Ritchie made in his unique style. This will be great entertainment for those that like their crime thrillers bloody and action packed but the story is a little threadbare and hackneyed with a little too many flashbacks and clever plot connivances for its own good. In fact it would probably have been a better film with a more gifted and nuanced actor in the lead. Statham plays 'H' a new employee at a security truck company. He's a cold fish, enigmatic and not popular until he takes down, with unprecedented skill, the bad guys who try to rob his truck. It soon becomes clear he's more than he appears and of course has his own agenda. It takes far too long to get to a clear position of what he exactly is up to but along the way there's plenty of gunplay. Scott Eastwood hams it up as a bad guy, Andy Garcia has a cameo and overall it's an efficiently made film that is a simple one made convoluted to give the impression it's better than it is.

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.

Heist thriller worth a watch - Wrath of Man review by Alphaville

If Guy Ritchie geezer-gangster films leave you cold you’ll be tempted to give this one a body swerve, but it turns out to be a gritty LA-set heist thriller that has its moments. A bigger-budget remake of a better French film (Le Convoyeur – the Cash Truck), it has Limey Jason Statham infiltrating an armoured-vehicle security firm in search of vengeance.

Apart from the embarrassing title, two things let it down. (1) A long central flashback explains his motivation but becomes bogged down and confusing, with added unnecessary FBI agents. (2) Statham gives a deliberately even more impassive performance than usual (yes, really), making it hard to get inside his character.

Still, the plot does its job of linking the gung-ho action set-pieces and it’s these that make the film worth a look if you’re partial to a spot of gunplay. The prolonged climactic battle, full of minor characters we’ve either come to care about or hate, is perhaps the best Ritchie has directed.