‘Wrath of Man’ — Style Over Substance
A B-movie opus by Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham.
If you’re familiar with Guy Ritchie’s films — the ones he also wrote, not just directed — you know the man adores dialogue. He makes love to the written word. Not as passionately as Tarantino, but it’s something that made his work distinctive throughout his career. I mean, he created a mixed, mainly gibberish, pikey accent for Brad Pitt in Snatch. Even in his mediocre features, language was always something that stood out if everything else failed. He never sacrificed dialogue for style and action (at least not entirely) until Wrath of Man rolled around.
Frankly, the trailer looked shite. It seemed that even in Ritchie’s hands, Jason Statham can’t seem to get out of the Bald-Brit-Badass (BBB) character Hollywood type-cast him in the last fifteen years. Yet, the writer-director surprised everyone with a tonal shift that emphasized suspense and style instead of dialogue and language. He broke away from his usual formula and made a high-concept action flick look like an opus of M. Night Shyamalan.
Since 2005, Statham hasn’t really got a role that challenged him as an actor — and make no mistake, he’s a talented, witty, and charismatic actor. He prefers to get paychecks for playing the same characters over and over again. Not that he’s got much of a…
