Wrath of Man (2021) Review

“We’re not the predators. We’re the prey.”

After almost two decades Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie finally team up for their fourth collaboration. When I saw the trailer for Wrath of Man, I saw Statham confident and comfortable in the genre he’s inhabited for over two decades. I was intrigued to see them reunite, I always felt Ritchie brought out the best in him.

However, you must know this film is a remake of 2004 french film Le Convoyeur, and like any remake it’s always concerning when an established foreign film is remade for American audiences — it rarely matches the originals quality, much less exceeds it. For all his artistic flourishes, Ritchie can’t save the film, perhaps because this revenge story has been tackled many times over. Maybe it’s his leading man Jason Statham’s uninspired performance. It wastes the talents of Jeffrey Donovan and Josh Hartnett who are always welcome, the latter of which is painfully miscast, but it’s hard to blame him when he doesn’t have a good script to work with.

Statham plays a mob boss whose son is killed, so he tasks his crew of very talented individuals — the casting of this crew is the only aspect the film gets right — to scavenge the underground of competing crews who could have targeted the young prince.

As the crew searches for answers, they uncover atrocities they weren’t looking to find. It is the most compelling aspect of the film and sadly, it is only glossed over in that one scene.

The film very briefly explores moral ambiguity amongst thieves, but if they had explored this theme more, and allowed us to question the motivations of the lead character played by Statham, it might have been amongst Ritchie’s most memorable films, even if you felt dirty after the journey.