Guy Ritchie films have been accused of many things over the years, but “boring” has rarely been among the slights. Removed from his native soil in this latest outing and robbed of anything resembling a unique or interesting character (usually the hallmarks of his work), Ritchie is fully and truly adrift with “Wrath of Man”: a sophomoric revenge fantasy that reads at the middle school level. With its lead on autopilot, and a script whose big twist is that there is no twist, that this is as hollow, stupidly violent, and derivative as it appears at first glance, the movie’s only real surprise comes from its stunning ability to somehow keep getting worse with each passing scene.
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The film opens with a Los Angeles armored truck robbery gone bad, where the drivers and a couple civilians get shot, mostly off-camera. Jumping ahead a few months, “Wrath of Man” introduces H (Jason Statham), who is in the middle of an employment intake interview at the same armored truck company that got hit in the previous scene. H’s boss explains that it is a dangerous gig, but as a private company specializing in high-end clients, they only hire the best and do professional work.
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H proves himself more than capable when his truck is attacked a few weeks into the job, where he not only protects the money but dispatches the bandits with a series of headshots that would make John Wick blush. Although H’s bosses are thrilled, the cops seem to know there’s more to the story: something a flashback outlining H’s connection to the opening robbery elaborates upon. It turns out H lost something that day, and his work with the armored truck company is part of a scheme to get closer to the people involved.
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As far as plots go, “Wrath of Man” isn’t boasting anything special, yet that doesn’t really matter. Ritchie’s best work has never been especially complex (a poker robbery or a lost diamond) but was made fun of and interesting to varying degrees by the colorful characters populating the narrative. Maybe it’s because Ritchie is just one of the five credited writers for the story, but “Wrath of Man” doesn’t sport anything reminiscent of the fun interplay of quirky characters his other, better efforts enjoy. It’s a problem that leaks into the movie as a whole, for in the absence of this, there’s frightfully little fun to be had with this one at all.
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Part of the blame can be shared by Statham, who passes through each scene like a man on a mission to get to lunch as quickly as possible. Flat, uninspired, and robbed of any whiff of joy, the actor doesn’t even seem to be trying to sell the dreck on the page. And as sure as there’s a sun in the sky, the dialogue in “Wrath of Man” is categorically, unquestionably, unfathomably bad. Utilitarian and spoken only to move the narrative forward, it’s not just clunky and amateurish; it reeks of screenwriting based on cliché rather than real life. When an ex-military heist crew is introduced in the second act, things go from bad to worse in this regard, giving the audience gems like, “One minute we’re killing Arabs, and the next minute we’re wiping their ass.”
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Who these guys are and why they do the things they do boil down to moments that see the characters just telling the audience their motivation wholesale, with dialogue that would have gotten a person banished from an after-school-special writer’s room. “I wish I was back in the unit. Boredom’s more dangerous than bullets. Give me an enemy I can fucking see.” It’s oppressively stupid and only gets worse as “Wrath of Man” moves towards its altogether expected and uninspired finale.
At one point, when the camera zooms in on a gang boss typing in the numbers of their expected take on a calculator, hitting the divide button, getting the split, then saying that number aloud, the movie finds its thesis. Nothing is shown in this movie: it is all told…like, literally. Worse still, the particulars surrounding the conceit of the film’s heartbeat, this armored car delivery service, is as flimsy as any dialogue in the picture. These vehicles transport money; sure, that’s their function, but in what universe do these trucks take all their money to a central location at the end of the day and hold it? A major plot point of the third act revolves around a robbery of the truck company, which, if examined for even a handful of minutes, evaporates under the pain of logic.
Further hampered by lethargic pacing and supporting work from the likes of Andy Garcia (who appears confused about his role in the film), Josh Hartnett (who seems to think he’s in a different movie entirely), and Niamh Algar (who the script loses track of for huge chunks of the picture), “Wrath of Man” trips over its feet at every opportunity. Hyper-violent and narratively undercooked, the film represents a creative nadir for pretty much everyone involved and manages something even Ritchie usually avoids: boredom. [F]