A mysterious and wild-eyed new cash truck security guard (Jason Statham) surprises his coworkers during a heist in which he unexpectedly unleashes precision skills. The crew is left wondering who he is and where he came from. Soon, the marksman’s ultimate motive becomes clear as he takes dramatic and irrevocable steps to settle a score.
Including “Wrath of Man,” Jason Statham and director Guy Ritchie have teamed up on four movies, with a fifth film, “Five Eyes,” to be released later in 2021. While Statham has always infused his characters with comedic and serious overtones, here, he is no-nonsense and absolutely humorless. While the trailer might give the appearance of yet another shoot-’em-up, slam-bang action thriller, Ritchie and co-writers Nicolas Boukhrief, Éric Besnard, Marn Davies, and Ivan Atkinson, deliver an exhilarating and, at times, unconventional take on the gangster movie.
Statham plays H, a secretive and complicated man who gets a job as a security guard at a cash truck company called Fortico Securities, based in the Los Angeles area. The company is in charge of securing and moving hundreds of millions of dollars every week and after H’s initial training, he sets out with his partners, Bullet (Holt McCallany) and Dave (Josh Hartnett), on his first cash pick-up assignment. However, they are quickly ambushed by masked men and told if they do not comply and give them all the money in the truck, they will be shot dead. Both Bullet and Dave comply but H quickly steps out of the truck and in a matter of seconds, kills all the criminals.
Having made a name for himself back at the depot for his courage under fire, his co-workers feel more confident that a man of his experience is on their team. As the story progresses, we see a flashback of H along with his teenage son Dougie (Eli Brown), who just happens to be in L.A. on holiday from London. Out for a drive to grab some food, they both inadvertently get caught up in an ambush on one of Fortico’s cash trucks, resulting in Dougie’s death by one of the attackers, and H’s hospitalization. After his recovery, H is determined to track down the men responsible for his son’s death, and after putting pressure on local gangs to determine the identity of the men, and coming up empty-handed, he decides to join Fortico, in the hopes of discovering if the ambush was aided by an insider within the company.
The plot twist that works so well gives the impression that H is an undercover agent trying to track down the bad guys, utilizing his agency’s resources, but he is actually an undercover crime boss for one of the largest organizations on the West Coast. What also works so well is that the ambush of the truck in which H’s son was killed, is shown in flashback not just from H’s perspective, but also from the point of view of the two guards inside the truck and the frame of reference from the men who attacked it. We discover that they are ex-marines led by the brainy and scheming Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan), and that one of the men, Jan (Scott Eastwood), is ruthless in every aspect of the word, and has absolutely no trepidation whatsoever when it comes to killing anybody who gets in the way of his money, including H’s son.
When Jackson informs his men that he has a plan that would make them so much money they’d never have to work again, their greed gets the best of them and they all agree to the plan, which involves them attacking the Fortico cash depot on Black Friday when stores will have so much money that the trucks will have to make multiple stops. When H finally discovers the identity of the insider who is helping the ex-marines, he gets caught up in the exchange of gunfire once the assault on the depot begins but his only objective is taking down the men, especially Jan, who murdered his son but it proves more difficult than he expected when they all arrive wearing bulletproof uniforms and helmets.
Much of the action that transpires throughout could be seen as formulaic in the hands of a lesser filmmaker but Ritchie manages to infuse every scene with enough flair and panache that it almost feels balletic. Statham has never been more invested in a character and here, he is determined to track down and kill the people responsible for the death of his boy, no matter what the cost, including his own life. The film is devoid of humor and typically I would make an argument against this as I feel most stories could always benefit from occasional moments of levity but Ritchie and Statham purposely set out to make the movie as ferocious and unwavering as possible and as a result, it works.
Scott Eastwood, the spitting image of his famous father, typically plays good-guy roles but here, he portrays the cold-blooded Jan with a brutal and merciless disconnect, proving that while he may have his father’s looks and recognizable last name, he is a damn fine actor who has come into his own. “Wrath of Man” sees Ritchie return to his roots, dealing with crime families and the violence that accompanies such a lifestyle, he just shifts the narrative from London to Los Angeles and does so with great aplomb.
Now available on Digital HD and on Blu-ray and DVD July 13th
