Wrath of Man Review

I feel mislead by "Wrath of Man." This action, heist, crime thriller had me hooked by the first trailer, with its leading man Jason Statham shooting people and looking upset. That ends up happening here, but its buried beneath a convoluted continuity that jumps months in past, then weeks in the future, then months after that- it's exhausting!

The reason is likely director Guy Ritchie, who shows up first in its list of producers, then first in the list of "screenplay by," which he shares with Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies. Look, I get it. He's the "man behind the camera," the driving force in getting this story told on the big screen. Yet I can't help but feel that, perhaps, the mans ego has gone to his head. The narrative, so needlessly obtuse and twisty, feels designed to be exactly that. Why? Who knows? Maybe Ritchie will tell us on the audio-commentary once the DVD's dropped.

The truth is, the story is basic, and the premise could have been executed in a far cleaner, leaner manner; instead, we get belated double-crosses, false herrings, needless interrogations, and characters who're introduced only to disappear until the script demands they smile and show the audience "see, we didn't forget about Josh Hartnett."

Our (anti)hero Statham plays Patrick Hill, nicknamed "H" by a man nicknamed Bullet (Holt McCallany), I mean, it has to be a nickname, that or his parents were, ah-hem, "under the gun" when trying to come up with a name. He's looking for the man who killed his son in an armored money-deposit truck robbery gone awry, and suspecting the heist was an inside job, he joins the company, Fortico Security, where his "certain set of skills" are constantly put to the test. I mean, their trucks are habitually stopped by men in ski-masks and twitchy trigger fingers, and we the audience get a lot of shots of, well, gunshots. That's all fine and dandy, that's what we came here for, but there's more going on under the surface.

The problem with what's under the surface is how it's told. See, "H" is the boss of a crime syndicate, who used himself rob the same trucks he now operates. That's not a spoiler- where else would he have learned how to take down six men when he brings a handgun to a machine gun fight? The boyscouts?! Anyway, the men who killed his kin are some other criminals, some group he's never heard of. Instead of involving his associates in his exploits, he assumes a new name and well, here we are. This itself could make for a solid picture, but instead it's non-linearity and deliberate misleading frustrated me as I munched on my pepperoni flatbread and sipped a large Coke Zero. Only the first two acts are interwoven, leaving the entire third act to be told linearly. Why? A good mystery film would have used all of it'd runtime to keep you guessing, inspiring you to think twice about what you think you know about these characters. "Wrath of Man" instead had me thinking that there had to be a better way to tell this story.

Can I think of a better way? I don't know, but then again, I'm not a filmmaker! I felt duped by the lack of explanations: who does Statham work for? How do the bad guys know how long it'll take the S.W.A.T team to arrive during the big climax? Why do the armored trucks have switches which turn off the security cameras? I probably had more questions, but the movie ended about an hour ago, and I'm already forgetting it.