BEFORE: I've had a couple long sleeps now, so I've recovered from the beer festival in Jersey City - what's weird is that I was up EARLY on Sunday, I've noticed that as soon as the beer is gone, I tend to be wide awake and I can't get back to sleep, so I just start my day and go on with life, but it would be very wrong to think that if I had to get up early and work, I should drink a lot the night before. That would be a very dangerous mental path to go down, I think. Anyway it's probably an illusory feeling, just because I feel awake the next day and have no hangover, that doesn't mean that I'm fine and dandy, that afternoon I'll probably crash or sleep for 14 hours in the next cycle - I'm just kicking the problem can down the road a bit. I just take it as a signal that my body is "clear" of the alcohol, and sure, I can function and converse and we can go out for a proper breakfast, but the lack of sleep is bound to catch up with me soon. I've got a couple days off now, so it's time to double-up on action movies and do some list maintenance, clear a few shows off the DVR and take out the next round of DVDs for the upcoming two weeks.
Josh Hartnett carries over from "Fight or Flight", and I'm back on Jason Statham films for a while. So I have to watch this one next, because of the linking and because it's about to disappear from Netflix on March 24. It may go to the MGM-centric channel on cable after that, who knows, but I have to work it in before it leaves streaming - the next three films I can watch in any order, I just need to end with the right Statham film that gives me a proper outro that gets me to Easter on time. And not too early, either, like Holt McCallany is in tonight's film, and I could go from here RIGHT to "Mission: Impossible - the Final Reckoning", but that gets me to my Easter film about 13 days too early. Last year in late March we took a vacation and if I were taking 8 days off this year, that path would have been great, but since I'm sticking around I'll take the longer road. The same goes for Josh Hartnett, if I linked to "Wicker Park" now it would similarly get me there too quickly.
THE PLOT: A mysteriously stoic character is hired as a security guard for an armored truck company responsible for transporting a lot of money around Los Angeles each week.
AFTER: I have to say, I think Guy Ritchie has really made something of himself, I can't believe this is the same guy who directed the nightmare suck-fest that was "Swept Away" and also the mess that was "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword", after pissing on the "Sherlock Holmes" franchise a few times. I kind of wish now that I could watch his films in the order they were released, just to watch his skill develop - I know he started out with Cockney crime films and now he's kind of circled back to them, and the more recent work, like "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" and "The Gentlemen" has been super solid. Now I've watched two recent films this week, both with Statham, who started out in "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels", so it kind of feels like homecoming week.
"Wrath of Man" is one of those twisty films that jumps around in time quite liberally, which I'm usually very much against, except for films made by Tarantino or Scorsese, and now I think I'll have to make allowances for Ritchie as well. Not everyone knows the right way to do this, like it shouldn't be done just to start with the most shocking bit and then flash back to show how we got there, like "Fight or Flight" did - that just gives too much away, like we knew that the flight was going to turn to absolute chaos before it even took off. No, the RIGHT way to do this is to withhold valuable information, to start in the most mysterious spot possible, and then flashback to reveal important information, but only WHEN it needs to be revealed, so that it changes simply everything. "The Hateful Eight" is one of the best examples, like if the film was edited completely chronologically, the first scene would be people arriving at the cabin to hide inside, and, well, that would just give everything away, wouldn't it? Sorry, spoiler alert for "The Hateful Eight". But when those people reveal themselves, it's a great time to flash back and show us how they got there in the first place, just PLEASE put up one of those supers that says, "8 hours ago" or "two weeks later", because I'm going to have to put all this in order later on.
In "Wrath of Man", that means starting with the armored car heist, and after that movie five months into the future, then another three months forward, then eight months backwards, back to the heist. Then three weeks forward, then backwards again (seven months?) to see the planning of the heist, and the heist again. Then five months forward AGAIN to another planning session, and finally two months forward to Black Friday, and the second (third?) heist. It's a lot of jumping around, and we see the heist itself from a number of different POV's, "Rashomon" style, but each time we learn MORE about it, so yeah, it's kind of justified. Doing things this way takes twice as long and also makes everything about three times more complicated than it needs to be, but clearly somebody looked at the story, broke it down, and realized that it didn't work if you just did start-to-finish.
What makes things a bit more confusing is the fact that there are TWO different gangs of thieves in L.A. that are working the armored car heist circuit. I guess this makes sense, I mean it is a big city and there are a lot of bad people (half of whom have British accents, like who knew?) but this is what the armored car security guards are up against, I agree they have to be on edge like 100% of the time, because if it's not one gang shooting paint pellets and smoke grenades and cutting through their armored car's armor with a giant chain-saw, it's probably the other guys. And it helps that every time we see the heist, it's from a different character's perspective, so we see it once from the inside of the truck, we see it again when Statham's character was a bystander (of sorts) and then the third time, it's from the perspective of the gang doing the heist. By the third time, we know every beat and it's a lot easier to follow along, at least.
I have a feeling that I missed a lot of the connections, like maybe this is the "Pulp Fiction" of armored car heists and after you watch it seven or eight times maybe you can see all of the connections, all the stuff below the surface that you missed the first time - like I think I know how H at the end knows where that guy from the Black Friday heist lives, but I don't want to say it and be wrong. I kind of wish I had time to watch this one again, Chapter One probably hits a lot different after you gain the knowledge from Chapters Two and Three, but I just don't have time, I probably won't ever have time to circle back to this one, and that's a bit of a shame. I stand by the reasoning, however, that this is probably the most somebody COULD do with an armored car-heist plot.
However, there's always room for improvement - the title, for example, tells me absolutely nothing, it feels too philosophical for a heist film, we need something more like "The Bank Job" or "The Italian Job", I know those are taken but come on, we can do better. This is a remake of a French film called "Le Convoyeur", or "Cash Truck", and even that's a better title than what they landed on. Secondly, that poster - it's boring as hell, just putting Statham in a suit with bloody knuckles, is that the BEST you could do? It tells me NOTHING about the film, like a lot about Jason Statham, but where's the armored car, the bullets, the action, the pile of bodies? A photo of Statham running toward the camera and screaming would have been a hundred times more dynamic. Even a posed montage like the posters for "Operation Fortune" or "Black Bag" would have been better, but come ON, this is an action movie, the poster needs some action in it.
I realize that Statham seems to have two speeds - full-on action hero and dead-stop quiet guy trying to figure out the plan of attack. But we came here for the FIRST one and we tolerate the quiet guy during the down time - but only because we know he's going to be in Beast Mode before long. It's a bit like Los Angeles, which has two modes, too, one is the flashy, fast, celebrity beach-themed party mode, and the other is the dirty, gritty, industrial janky side of town, which is mostly what is on display here. And just like "Operation Fortune", there's a nod to "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" that suggests that thieves can't even trust each other, so if you just leave them alone perhaps they'll just kill each other - hey, do the police know about this? Because it sure seems like that would make their jobs a lot easier.
Directed by Guy Ritchie (director of "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre")
Also starring Jason Statham (last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre"), Eddie Marsan (ditto), Holt McCallany (last seen in "Monster Trucks"), Rocci Boy Williams (last seen in "The Beekeeper"), Jeffrey Donovan (last seen in "Honest Thief"), Scott Eastwood (last seen in "Pacific Rim: Uprising"), Andy Garcia (last seen in "Pain Hustlers"), Deobia Oparei (last seen in "The Four Feathers"), Laz Alonso (last seen in "Jarhead"), Raul Castillo (last seen in "Smile 2"), Chris Reilly (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Niamh Algar (last seen in "The Wonder"), Tadhg Murphy (last seen in "The Northman"), Alessandro Babalola (last seen in "The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare"), Babs Olusanmokun (ditto), Mark Arnold (last seen in "Angel Has Fallen"), Gerald Tyler, Alex Ferns (last seen in "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"), Josh Cowdery (last seen in "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them"), Jason Wong (last seen in "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves"), Rob Delaney (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One"), Eli Brown (last seen in "A Complete Unknown"), Kerry Shale (last heard in "Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed"), Cameron Jack (last seen in "The Last Vermeer"), Darrell D'Silva (last seen in "Marlowe"), Thomas Dominique, Lyne Renee (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Rebecca Calder (last seen in "Memory"), Matthew Illesley (last seen in "Rocketman"), Phoebe Farnham, Eve Macklin (last seen in "Brooklyn"), Fernando Martinez (last seen in "Term Life"), Post Malone (Austin Post) (last seen in "Dear Santa"), Sam Shoubber, Anthony Elfonzia, Mark Cotone, Bestemsu Ozdemir (also last seen in "Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre").
RATING: 7 out of 10 paintball guns
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