‘Wrath of Man’ Is the Action-Heist-Revenge Flick You Want Right Now

Wrath of Man: a Jason Statham movie directed by Guy Ritchie. Check. A revenge thriller sporting the clothing of a heist thriller: a savoury treat-within-a-treat, like a bacon-wrapped sausage. Check, check. The movie is more or less a remake of the 2004 French film Cash Truck (Le Convoyeur), and its cast is a dreamy assortment of dependably engaging character stalwarts (Eddie Marsan, Holt McCallany, Andy García, Jeffrey Donovan) with a few against-type additions (Josh Hartnett, Raúl Castillo, comedian Rob Delaney), a worthwhile Scott Eastwood — and, yeah, even a little Post Malone (playing “Robber #6,” so don’t have your hopes up about an extensive cameo). The checks pile on.

But Ritchie and Statham are the names that matter most — clearly. They’ve got the compatible swagger that makes the movie worth watching. Ritchie is a director whose style is always mired in the disarmingly foulmouthed delight of meatheaded wit. Statham is like a human trash compactor, too good at inspiring B-movies to whittle themselves down to just the most appropriate bits. Combine the two and you get swift, muscular and — maybe most of all — articulate activity. And you get a Ritchie movie that pairs him with that rare actor who profits from talking less, not more. Better still, Wrath of Man knows it’s better off making someone else do the talking. “That man’s overqualified for this game. He’s got history,” they claim. “He’s a dark fucking spirit,” a “cold, cold cunt,” they say. And in tribute: “Let the painter paint.” In blood, evidently.

It’s the other things — the stuff that veers away from Statham, toward the cadre of Donovan, Eastwood, and the like — that doesn’t fit just as well, because, well, who cares? It’s not unnecessary; it’s only not as deserving of all the schematic rigmarole that the movie otherwise devotes to its star. You can’t jump from Statham trudging through dank corridors more threatening than a shadow, going on a cold-blooded kill-spree halfway through the movie, to a bunch of not-so-scary enemies making preparations, doing their thing, being the enemy. That’s definitely to the mark. Statham > everybody else. Got it. Then why the long detour? It enervates stuff a bit, distracts from the pulp.

Wrath of Man is a decent showing from Ritchie, however. After the likes of Aladdin — a creative failure for not letting Ritchie loose, no matter how funny it is that the universe was actually blessed by a Disney movie directed by Guy Ritchie — I wasn’t exactly concerned, but the disappointment was merited. Wrath of Man is a good solution to that. There’s an amusing thread inside, a pleasant friction, between protocol and what makes more sense for survival. Surprise, surprise: protocol — even Disney’s — takes you nowhere. The movie appears to have internalised this notion down to its very bones, tearing the chronological thread of its plot out of order, with chapter breaks and months or weeks-long flashes forward and back, as if to suggest that the cleanest road to the movie’s heart is a path shaped by its star.

That the movie falters as it deviates from this strategy is just more proof of concept. It recovers as it sticks the landing: a satisfying, if boring, gun show to crown things up, some sweet betrayals, a touch of panic-faced heroism from Josh Hartnett, and, ultimately, a culminating kill sequence that’s dazzlingly humorous, vengeful to the point of pettiness. That’s the interesting things. Statham is still worth seeing. But it’s in its closing scenes that this particular vehicle, Wrath of Man, wins its keep.

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