Wrath of Man

2021, Guy Ritchie (The Gentlemen) -- download/Netflix

In the Ritchie mythology, British gangsters are colourful and their goons often have fun names. It all started with Jason Statham as Bacon, in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels which created a micro-genre for Ritchie, of which he didn't milk to death. Subsequently, he had some flops, some successes and some unexpected releases -- Will Smith Aladdin I am looking at you. He returned recently to his roots with The Gentlemen, which was all tweedy and fun, and then this one snuck in, which seems to me at his attempt to introduce his signature style to the American crime fiction world. There is no fun to be had here; in American they are all very serious.

Glowering, in fact.

Statham is H, the new guy on an armoured car detail, one suffering from a spate of violent robberies that escalated into murders. But they see themselves as the Fort Knox of armoured car depots, tons of weaponry and high tech gadgetry protecting entry and departures. In his first post-training outing, robbery is indeed attempted and H shoots the bad guys; all of them, with a skill that didn't match his mediocre testing scores. Something is up behind the scowl on H's face, something dark and sinister and perhaps tragic. We know it, because it's an American action flick. But nobody else suspects.

In doing some reading on this flick, I found out it was a remake of a French movie -- Le Convoyeur, which I am now eager to see. As an adaptation to the Ritchie style, and an American setting, it works. Gone are the colourful gangsters (for the most part), and the fun names are assigned to the  toxic masculinity that is the armoured car company ("boy sweat dave" wtf is up with that name?) but in an existing mythology where gangsters are usually old school Mafia or newer Cartels, Ritchie with the other side of the American crime fence -- skilled, violent, but not career, criminals with their own back stories.

The plot twists and turns and heads in the inevitable direction (the robbery of the armoured car depot) and adds a heavy dose of Revenge Plot. Statham is expected recent-genre Statham (as I said, glowering) without the quippy banter of older Ritchie flicks -- he leaves that to the locker room of the depot. Harkening back to the movie it is often compared to, Den of Thieves, we see the assault from both sides, but we will always side with H, even when we know what he is all about.

This movie was solid, very American, and I am eager to see what else Ritchie will bring to the American crime thriller world. We need more mostly unadorned crime fiction, in the world that now wants everything to either be gritty and dark (Breaking Bad), or mythological and flashy (John Wick).

P.S. The tweedy poster does indeed give something away.