Guy Ritchie’s “Wrath of Man” is the movie “Den of Thieves” wishes it was.
An armoured car is incapacitated, invaded, and the drivers and an innocent bystander are killed. Some months later, the mysterious Patrick Hill or “H” (Jason Statham) joins a cash truck company in Los Angeles. Amid another truck heist, the cold and exacting H executes his attackers with a surgeon’s efficiency. Who is H, and what is he after? In a word, vengeance.
Director Guy Ritchie’s fast cut, dynamically framed, fast-talking, needle-drop resplendent, London set crime double act – “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch” – had an immense influence on the global crime cinema genre.
It feels appropriate and exciting that Ritchie adopts a more classical composition style here that tips the hat to Sergio Leone (the casting of Scott Eastwood, I would contend, is no accident). Ritchie flexes his Western movie aesthetic muscles proudly for this vengeful tale on the contemporary west coast.
There’s a sequence that typifies the stylistic pursuit of “Wrath of Man”. During a segment that provides a glimpse into who H is, Ritchie uses the camera and lighting to exponentially amplify the character’s emotional turmoil. In a moment that H is coping with bad news, Ritchie pushes into Statham’s face. His face snaps into focus with each step. The transitions between his feet touching the ground and his face is a blur. H’s disorientation and disillusion are made manifest in the inconsistent focus.
When H is in his lowest moment sitting across the table dealing and being dealt bad news, Ritchie and cinematographer Stewart shoot his head in an impossible silhouette; the depths of his despair cast his face in shade. H’s crew (played by Cameron Jack, the outstanding Darrell D’Silva and the strikingly intense Bas Olusanmokun) are explaining the status of their pursuit. They’re not talking to his face but rather to H’s bulging, rigid back. H whispers clarifications of their status update, and man by man, the camera charts their wordless reactions – the gravity of their stares. The slow punctuative push is like an energy vice.
“Wrath of Man” simply could not escape comparisons to the greatest heist film of all time, Michael Mann’s 1995 crime opus “Heat”. For starters, the film begins, beat for beat, precisely as that film does with an armoured car hold-up compromised by a trigger happy crowd-control crew member that steps over the line.
The direct “Heat” homage ends there though, rather Ritchie and cinematographer Alan Stewart take cues from Mann’s approach to Los Angeles. Ritchie and Stewart use the L.A skyline as the signifier to reorient the audience and then repeatedly subvert topography that typifies the city. The most recognisable movie city in the world (save for perhaps San Francisco) is presented as an ancient city, a cluster of L.A’s metropolis is impenetrable – a beacon.
“Wrath of Man” occupies the low lying sprawl, the endless industrial hubs that help supply the state. Factories and warehouses disguise all manner of foul deeds and provide cover for the crews who figuratively ‘clean house’ – units with tactical proficiency, weaponry, knowledge of escape routines and dealing with the ever increasing risk of police S.W.A.T. (tactical opposition) materialising.
Ritchie reunites with Marn Davis and Ivan Atkinson to adapt Nicolas Boukhrief and Eric Besnard’s “Le Convoyeur” (aka “Cash Truck”). The structure is superb, articulating the thematic centre of each of the five acts with a quote title card. The non-linear story must actively retrace its steps once the H and audience hit a key revelatory moment.
The structural shift doesn’t feel like it’s coy; instead, it takes us to the edge of a shocking moment and uses the detached storytelling to immediately catch you up. Ritchie, Davis and Atkinson, do enough to explain that corruption and paid off government officials allow for the chaos of this movie to reign un-impeded.
While this critic has not seen the film that it was based on, this feels like a younger, slicker, supercharged brother of Bruce Beresford’s 1978 Sydney-set “Cash Movers” which is also about an armoured car depot with a cash flow that attracts a cache of insiders, corrupt insurance agents, bent cops and criminals – thrusting the film to a delightfully messy and intentionally unsatisfying conclusion.
Jason Statham is terrific as H. While one may have their heart set the fast-talking charm of Bacon from “Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” or attempted suave of Turkish from “Snatch” for this reunion, H is the zenith for Statham’s action badass run. While so many of Statham’s tough guys try and do the inimitable Schwarzenegger/Willis glib action hero violence and one-liner combo, it’s refreshing to see Statham get a chance to play laconic, ice cold.
Statham conveys what it means to strike fear into one’s enemies rather than constantly explaining. The supporting cast of “Wrath of Man” is like a character actor fantasy draft. The notable members of the roster are the formidable Holt McCallany, the chameleonic Eddie Marsan, the sturdy Jeffrey Donovan, the slippery Josh Hartnett, and Scott Eastwood’s son of ‘Man With No Name’ (actually named Jan – named for one assumes the annoying middle Brady child).
Andy Garcia provides another surprising and satisfying cameo in 2021 following “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”. In “Wrath of Man” he plays an unspecified government official of influence who deflects a duo of detectives from deeper scrutiny on H by saying something like “let the painter, paint.” Guy Ritchie’s “Wrath of Man” is another contemporary, cruel and karmic, crime thriller. Let the painter paint.
