Ritchie and Statham go dark in 'Wrath of Man'

Wrath of Man (2021)
Starring: Jason Statham, Holt McCallany, Josh Hartnett, Jeffrey Donovan, Scott Eastwood, Niamh Algar, Chris Reilly, and Laz Alonso
Director: Guy Ritchie
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

A new hire at an armored car company (Statham) is far more than he pretends to be and has taken the job to find out who was behind the a violent robbery that led to the death of his son.

"Wrath of Man" is a grim, action-oriented thriller that surprised me in several different ways. All of them good.

First, I thought I had figured out the general gist of the movie, based on the preview and prior experience with Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham films. I was convinced that it was going to be a mix of action and comedy--even if perhaps a little darker--than their previous films together; I was fully expecting to see "Undercover Boss, but with Guns and Explosions". Instead, what was delivered was a deadly serious, unforgiving tale of corruption and revenge, with a side-dish of heist action, where everything is bleak, what comedy that is present is mean-spirited sarcasm, no one is innocent, and everyone comes to a bad end. It's all so well-done, however, that while is wasn't the movie I expected, it was still entertaining.

Second, although I was wrong about the the nature of this film going it, once I realized what I was watching, I guessed almost everything about who the bad guys were and where it was going. (It was about halfway through the movie before I had EVERYTHING figured out, because the story is told out of order). In just about every way, this film is a throwback to the dark crime dramas of the 1970s, storywise, stylewise, and so on. Everything here is so well executed by the director and technical crew, and so well performed by the actors that it didn't matter that things kept going where I thought they'd go. I was watching such a perfect homage to old-time crime dramas, crossed with more modern cultural sensibilities, that it might have been frustrating if things didn't go as expected. 

Third, the unrelenting bleakness of the didn't bother me in the least. I can't go into too much detail without spoiling the story, but when I said above that everyone comes to a bad end, I am no exaggerating by much. One character who appears to die was even in the middle of a redemption arc, and, if I was watching a lesser movie, I might have been bothered by that, but here it just seemed in keeping with the darkness of the world and let me tune more strongly into the anger of the Statham character. I'm one of those sappy people who likes to see the good characters in a story come away with something of a future (even if it's not a bright one), and the bad characters getting the punishments they deserve (and perhaps even more), but the excellent pacing and acting and everything made me feel okay about the outcome. (It might also have helped that I got to see more than a fair share of street justice being meted out against the most vile sorts of human beings as the film unfolded.)

Although it is almost two hours long, "Wrath of Man" feels much shorter. There isn't a single moment in this movie that's wasted, nor a single scene that feels padded or drags on; even the 20-minute plus gun battle that's part of the film's climax remains fast-paced and tense, which is something of a rarity. The universally excellent performances of the cast members also helps to keep things moving. Jason Statham is excellent, playing his usual tough guy but far colder and with more understated lethality than I've ever seen before, but we also have Josh Hartnett in a role that he was far more effective in that I initially thought he'd be--that of a weaselly armored car driver who likes to talk tough but is anything but; Jeffrey Donovan as the charismatic and detail-oriented leader of a military until turned armored car robbers; Holt McCallany as the perhaps a-little-too-friendly training officer at the armored car company; and Scott Eastwood as the ultimate scumbag. The film revolves around Jason Statham's character, with Jeffrey Donovan also occupying a key point in the story, but as perfect as both these actors are, neither performance would have come across as excellent as it is if it hadn't been for the equally brilliant performances by the supporting castmembers--or, for that matter, an attention to detail that's rarely seen anywhere. It's rare that I feel like I need to watch a movie a second time--there are just too many films and books and graphic novels I need to get to--but this is one that I think I should watch again, just to see what I may have missed.

I went to see "Wrath of Man" in the evening on opening day. There were only 12 people in the auditorium, which, even by the Covid-19 standards these days was light. I hope it's not a sign of the box office to come for this film, because I think it deserves to be seen. And if you enjoy Jason Statham and brutal 1970s-style heist films/crime dramas, I think this is a film you'll love.

The mystery is how this movie ended up so bad

 

The Black Dahlia (2005)
Stars: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johansson, Mia Kirshner, and Hilary Swank
Director: Brian De Palma
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A publicity-hungry police detective (Eckhart) arranges to have himself and his younger partner (Hartnett) assigned to the grisly murder of a would-be actress (Kirshner). As one detective starts to mysteriously come unglued, the other uncovers not only dark secrets relating to the dead actress, but to his partner as well. 

The Black Dahlia is almost completely devoid of focus. The script moves randomly from plot to subplot to barely relevant stuff, with the Black Dahlia murder being relegated to just above a minor tangent among a whole tangle of plots and subplots. The style of the film also swings widely between filming styles--at some points, it's heavy-handedly apeing the filming styles of the 1930s and 40s (complete with obligatory soft focus on the leading ladies), at others he goes for an almost documentary style detachment, and then there's the incredibly annoying sequence when the camera suddenly takes the POV of what Hartnett's character is seeing, thus putting the audience in his shoes. Not only is this a pointless break in style, it is very badly done. 

And then there's the editing. There isn't a single shot in the film that lasts more than ten seconds and all quick edits and jumping around with the camera angles gets tiresome very fast. 

To make this already weak film as bad as possible, it is further burdened by an ending that is is completely and totally botched, with the solution to the Black Dahlia killing being completely nonsensical and the other Big Revelations not quite fitting with the rest of the story either. 

It's a shame this movie is such a mess, because many of the actors give some great performances that are in step with the film noir/crime drama movies of the 1930s and 1940s. 

 
Aaron Eckhart turns in a great performance as a crooked cop (I'm not spoiling anything here... the Eckhart character is a standard for the kind of movie being emulated) whose life has come to orbit around the one decent thing he's done in his life... the rescue of a young woman from a life prostitution (Johansson). It's a shame his performance and character are undermined by the awful script that introduces a late-movie twist that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 

And then there's the hero of the tale, Hartnett's good-hearted, honest cop who is irrevokably tainted by the evil he encounters in the course of this film. His character is in genre, except that he spends too much time crying; it's okay for him to be sensitive, caring, and concerned with justice, but he shouldn't be getting weepy all the time. His character is, unfortunately, also undermined by the botched ending in the film and a particularly stupid scene where he shoots up the home of Swank's character. 

Someone couldn’t make up their mind what they were doing with this movie. Whatever potential it may have had is ruined by an inconsistent visual tone and a script that is messy, unfocused and internally inconsistent. It's a film that deserved to bomb and it's one that isn't worth the 2+ hours it's going to suck away from your life. It's one of those incompetently made films that falls in a zone of mediocrity that leaves it with no worthwhile aspect. 

In fact, the only Brian De Palma film worse than this one is his 2006 follow-up, Redacted. It's even more halfbaked than this one. 

What is a 'Lucky Number Slevin' anyhow?

Lucky Number Slevin (aka "The Wrong Man") (2006)
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Stanley Tucci, Lucy Liu, and Ben Kingsley
Director: Paul McGuigan
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

A case of mistaken identity places Slevin Kelevra (Hartnett) squarely in the middle of a decades-old feude between two rival crimelords (Freeman and Kingsley) that's about to get very, very hot. With a quirky coroner (Liu) as his only ally, and a cop with a dark secret out to arrest him (Tucci), Slevin has three days to figure out a way to balance the mutually exclusive expectations of the criminals threatening him and stay alive in the process. The difficult situation may well be impossible, as the feared assassin Mr. Goodkat (Willis) is also in the mix, with an agenda dating back over 20 years.


When "Lucky Number Slevin" appeared in theaters in 2006, I wrote in my review of it that "it seems that Hollywood is finally making some good thrillers again" and "I can declare that the dry-spell of decent thrillers in the vein of Hitchcock is over."

I have since stepped a bit back from that optimistic position--2006 was just a very good year for the thriller genre... the Hollywood offerings quickly returned to the levels of crapitude I have come to accept as reality--but "Lucky Number Slevin" was and is a great mix of film-noir genre standards and comedy that is enhanced by sharply crafted dialogue and presented in a fabulously convoluted mystery plot. The acting is top-rate by all involved, the set design appropriately strange (reflecting Slevin's bizarre predicament), with clever use of editing, overlays, and the musical score serving only to elevate what is already good even further. While there isn't a whole lot of originality in "Lucky Number Slevin" as far as the story goes, it uses the building blocks of a film-noir story so effectively that pretty much everything works here. (In fact, "Lucky Number Slevin" reminded me more of Hitchcock at his best than countless movies that critics have labeled "Hitchcockian" over the years.)

The only complaint I have with the film is Liu's character, Lindsey. Her dinginess became a little hard to swallow after it was revealed that she was a coronor, and I didn't buy the insta-relationship between her and Slevin. I have the same problem with a number of classic suspense movies--with Hitchcock's "Notorious" and "The Trouble With Harry" being among the biggest offenders--but given that it's an element that's present in many of "Lucky Number Slevin's" filmic ancestors, it doesn't bother me any more here that it does in the others.

I think fans of Hitchcock movies and well-done crime/caper movies will find "Lucky Number Slevin" well worth their time and money.