Wrath of Man

Let's start out with an admission. I haven't seen Swept Away, Guy Ritchie's 'love letter' film to his then partner, Madonna. Nor have I seen Aladdin, because, well, have a guess. But I have seen all Ritchie's other films and this one, Wrath of Man, may just be his third best. Of course, Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels will likely never be budged from spots one and two (that's my ordering, you may differ) but the rest of his catalogue is pretty dismal - and I'm including the Sherlock Holmes films here (though they had their moments).

Wrath of Man is based on a French thriller from 2004 with Jean Dujardin and Albert Dupontel called Le Convoyeur. Jason Statham takes the lead as H, in his fourth film for Ritchie, and is joined by an assemblage of familiar faces, if not A-list names. Holt McCallany (him out of Mindhunter), Josh Hartnett, Scott Eastwood (yep, son of...), Andy Garcia, Eddie Marsan, Niamh Algar, Rob Delaney, all add pretty straightforward but solid support to Statham. There's something about the Stath, it's quite clear he's not going to trouble Daniel Day Lewis or Ralph Fiennes in the acting stakes but he's as watchable as those guys, maybe more so, probably due to the tongue-in-cheek 'aaard geezer' niche that he has made his own. There's a line in this where Hartnett asks him what he should do and the Stath leaves a perfect pause before saying with his inimitable cockney sounds, "You can do watcha faaahking like."

Look, there's nothing ground-breaking about this film. The story is a revenge thriller where the 'whodunit' angle is so telegraphed that the 'who' refreshingly just owns up to it at one point, almost like it was decided that they couldn't be arsed trying to find the right spot for the reveal. The title is biblically foreboding and there are a few hints early on that the Stath is some kind of avenging angel of death but that's all kind of ushered to the side when the mechanics of he plot, such as they are, begin to develop. Ritchie avoids his usual idiosyncrasies of the swishing, point-of-view camera moves and the irritating laddish humour and just focuses on delivering a fractured timeline in the style of Tarantino, complete with the index card chapter titles and all. It's not brilliant but we've got a suitably diverting, misanthropic B-movie on our hands. Let's just appreciate the Stath while we can.

See also:

Well, if you haven't seen Ritchie's Snatch (2000), then do yourself a favour. But listen here you fucking fringe. If I throw a dog a bone, I don't want to know if it tastes good or not. And for more avenging, I remember Tony Scott's Man on Fire (2004) being a fair watch.