Wrath of Man

When Guy Ritchie is good, he is very good but, when he is bad, he is very, very bad.  Most of the time you don't know which Guy Ritchie you are going to get until the lights dim and the movie starts.  I saw his latest, Wrath of Man, last night and it definitely belongs in the former category even though it is a bit of a departure from his usual idiosyncratic style.  Fortico, a private armored car company responsible for moving millions of dollars around Los Angeles, is involved in a heist in broad daylight which results in a shootout that kills both Fortico guards as well as a civilian.  Several months later, Patrick "H" Hill (Jason Statham) is hired as a guard at Fortico after barely passing his shooting and driving tests.  He is taciturn and antisocial (Statham is perfect in the role) but, when H singlehandedly shoots every member of a gang during another heist, his co-workers come to view him as either a hero or a psychopath.  H is clearly not who he claims to be and half the fun of this movie is trying to unravel who he is and what he is doing as an armored car guard.  There are multiple possibilities as to his identity which are explored in several timelines and all converge in the initial heist shown from three different perspectives.  It is very clever and it kept me guessing throughout with a mysterious member of law enforcement who turns a blind eye (Andy Garcia), a group of ruthless gangsters (Cameron Jack, Darrell D'Silva, Babs Olusanmokun, and Thomas Dominique), a group of veterans (Jeffrey Donovan, Scott Eastwood, Deobia Oparei, Laz Alonso, Raul Castillo, and Chris Reilly), and a group of guards who may or may not be on the take (Holt McCallany, Rocci Williams, Josh Hartnett, and Niamh Algar).  The final heist at the Fortico depot, in which H unleashes his wrath, is absolutely epic and features stylized action sequences, cross-cuts between the planning and the execution of the heist, and a pulse-pounding score underneath it.  However, this movie is much darker in tone than any of Ritchie's previous movies and it lacks the humor and witty banter that we have come to expect from him but it really works.  I had a lot of fun watching this movie (I loved being in a large crowd on a Friday night) and I highly recommend it to fans of crime thrillers.