The action star’s latest collaboration with Guy Ritchie is violent fun with a slow-burn plot, but the movie has a woman problem
Whether you think Guy Ritchie is commenting upon overblown masculinity or merely indulging in it, his twist-laden crime sprees tend to be adrenaline-fueled fun, and in that regard, “Wrath of Man” is no exception. Ritchie’s reunion with leading man Jason Statham delivers the scheming, the shooting, and the swearing that the director’s fans have come to expect, by the bucketload. But even at his most dude-fixated, Ritchie has always wisely included at least one sharp and savvy female character, the smartest cookie at the sausage fest. (Think Thandiwe Newton’s character in “RocknRolla,” or Michelle Dockery’s in “The Gentlemen.”) This time out, the women tend to be ornamental or victimized (or both), leaving one to wonder if the film wouldn’t have been better off as an unfiltered testosterone-fest if the filmmakers couldn’t manage to provide one interesting woman. Ritchie and two other writers have adapted the 2004 French thriller “Le Convoyeur,” and this new version opens with one of the director’s trademark showy sequences, a one-take hold-up of an armored car by a group of crooks blocking the truck’s passage with a cement mixer. We see everything through one static camera in the back of the truck, with some of the more intense action taking place on the periphery, but don’t worry if you miss a detail: This robbery is the motor of the plot, and we’ll be seeing it a few more times from a few other angles.
