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"Wrath of Man" with Jason Statham. Could Guy Ritchie Make His Best Movie?
Butcher79
On April 22, Wrath of Men, a new action thriller by Guy Ritchie, will be released in Russian cinemas. For the first time since 2004's Revolver, the director is collaborating with Jason Statham again. Here's why Ritchie's first attempt at a serious crime film was better and why The Wrath of Man looks one-dimensional compared to his other work.
Plot
Guy Ritchie's favorite theme is gloomy humoresques about the criminal world of London. Attempts to get away from her fans of the director accept without enthusiasm: the films "Agents of A. N. K. L." The serious and strict movie "The Wrath of Man" about a group of transport guards also seems an unobvious choice for Richie.
The film is inspired by the 2004 French action film Le Convoyeur, and this explains the atypical plot. In Richie's version, H (Statham), a dark and mysterious man with excellent combat training, became the main character. As in the original, he gets a job in a collection company that is going through hard times.
The setting changed from an unnamed French city to Los Angeles. The company where H is employed is constantly raided - money disappears, collectors die. The company is rapidly losing reputation. H is given as a partner to the smiling and friendly Machine Gun (Holt McCallany). Both he and H's other colleagues are high-class professionals, but even for them, work becomes more dangerous every day. Raiders seem to know their every move and perfectly time to strike.
In contrast to the general anxiety, H is calm, no matter what happens. When bandits attack his armored car for the first time, the hero deals with them in a matter of seconds. He is not affected by threats, he does not care about money; the only thing Eich is interested in is to delve into the internal structure of the company. After a family tragedy, he vowed to find a "rat" that leaks all routes to criminals and exposes collectors to bullets. And the only way to figure out a traitor is to look for him from the inside, getting a job at a company.
Visual accompaniment and Christian allusions
The technical performance of The Wrath of Man is impeccable. Guy Ritchie wanted to push cars, fill extras with blood and demonstrate Statham's ability not to squint when shots - and he does it with taste, excellent soundtrack and peppy editing. What is happening is often shown not only from the point of view of H and other guards, but also from the point of view of criminal elements. In some places, all this spectacle makes you want to play GTA: where else can you drive such a high-quality armored truck?
The film is divided into several chapters, with different narrators and time periods, but without confusion and complexity for the viewer. This division makes "The Wrath of Man" even more like a parable. Such an analogy, however, arises both because of the title of the film (consonant with the biblical "wrath of God"), and because of other, more obvious references (one of the chapters is called "Evil Spirit").
All seven deadly sins are sewn into the characters of "The Wrath of Man". You can’t tell about this without spoilers, but the main antagonists of The Wrath of Man are definitely Anger and the Love of Money. However, greed in Richie's films destroys so many characters that it was possible to guess about it even before watching the film. Especially when it comes to collectors who are constantly working with huge amounts.
How "Human Wrath" lost to "Revolver"
The Wrath of Man could be considered a good, effective movie if it didn't have strong predecessors - the French original and Ritchie's own film, Revolver. Comparison with the latter is particularly disappointing.
At one time, "Revolver" received terrible reviews from critics and failed at the box office. For Richie, this was a large-scale and experimental work, an attempt to give action and criminal showdowns a second, or even a third plan, not to mention an interesting subtext. The film found its audience, albeit a small one. And just a couple of years later, complex, pretentious and multi-layered paintings with a crime story came into vogue through the work of Christopher Nolan.
In The Wrath of Man, the effort to extract additional storylines from the action movie is wasted. This is especially felt in how few of Ritchie's favorite tricks are in the film: harsh humor, torn editing, bright characters. Of all the good cast, only the always expressive Holt McCallany from the series Mindhunter and Clint Eastwood's son, Scott Eastwood, who gave 100% in the film Richie, are remembered. In the locker room of the collectors, only flat, passing jokes sound. Unlike the cult "Revolver", not a single scene really sinks into the soul and does not remain in the head after viewing.
"Human Wrath" is more complicated than the original "Collier": at least, Richie's film has a little more storylines. In addition, the director completely reworked the personality of the protagonist of the French version, Alexandre Demar: he awarded him with a different backstory, deadly severity and professional training.
Because of this, anger, a thirst for revenge, and an inability to forgive his enemies make a much weaker impression on the hero. Demar before the tragedy was a simple financier. The image of the hero was striking precisely by the contrast between his ordinary life and the determination that came from nowhere, the readiness to take revenge at any cost, to reach the end. He was a neurotic, deeply unhappy man with nothing more to lose.
Actor Albert Dupontel, not too famous in Russia, looks like the most ordinary man and plays his Demar with incredible anguish. Statham, against his background, seems like just a continuation of service weapons, the worst embodiment of Internet memes with his own face. And it's a shame - I wanted to get much more from his interaction with Richie. Yes, and without Richie in Statham's filmography there is much stronger roles.
Verdict
After the success of the cheerful, frivolous and full of drive "Gentlemen" Guy Ritchie decided to once again expand the scope of his own creativity. As a genre movie, The Wrath of Man is not bad: it is a tense and beautiful action movie, most of the elements of which work. Jason Statham and with his eyes closed can play a tough and brutal "man on a mission" (a man on a mission). Separate scenes - say, the final shootout in the office of a security company - do not let you take a breath, and the story itself with several points of view on what is happening turned out to be boring.
At the same time, the director's corporate style is sorely lacking. Even in box-office failures like King Arthur, Richie's favorite tricks showed through in every frame, reflected in the soundtrack, in super-fast editing and choice of angle. In "Wrath" he abandoned all "his" in favor of seriousness.
Due to the lack of humor and bright episodic characters (like the Coach from The Gentlemen), the picture came out faded. As a result, Guy Ritchie turned out to be a good action movie ... but at the same time, a weak Guy Ritchie film.
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