Mini Movie Review: Wrath of Man
The guy who made the poster was at least on top of his game. Whoops, is that a review spoiler?
This is a tough one for me. I know my ultimate impression: It's not for me, I acknowledge this. I acknowledged it might not be for me before I began watching it. But, I said to myself, I'll probably respect or appreciate it because Guy Ritchie's no novice.
Nevertheless, I don't think it was particularly good. Most of the specifics are good: With a few small exceptions, the acting is good. The plot is interesting, especially the first half when you aren't sure what's going on. Several of the fight sequences are cool. The cinematography is lovely, the score is great.
I could point out some flaws, like some of the acting being stilted, the plot becoming less interesting when the flash-back reveals the primary thing we were all curious about; everyone is unlikable at best, or dead at worst. Some of the stilted acting I mentioned before.
But none of those things should make me not appreciate a movie, right?
I think my problem is twofold: The dialogue and the characterization.
Ultimately, you hardly know who anyone is. Dave's character has, in my estimation, some of the most developed characterization in the movie, yet by the halfway point he's virtually irrelevant.
I understand the motivation of H, what they call the main character played by Jason Statham, but beyond the superficial pull of the heart-strings, I don't really know him or feel a connection with him. Despite the fact that the movie shows multiple sequences of him watching and re-watching the CCTV footage of his son being brutally executed, I still didn't manage to sympathize beyond, again, the superficial given that anyone would feel for a father who'd lost his son and wife.
When Bullet turned out to be the bad-guy, I didn't have much of an emotional reaction.
The two characters I cared about most, the girl and Dave, both die unceremoniously and were hardly relevant to the movie beyond filling out some roles.
And there's the dialogue. It isn't as "sufficient" as a lot of Hollywood tripe, but it certainly wasn't at that Tarantino/Christopher Nolan level where you really feel like you're watching an artist, a master of his craft, at work. It was slightly above average. With all of the other things not going for it, this was a blow from which my enthusiasm couldn't recover.
So ultimately, it's an O.K. movie, and if you specifically like movies where everyone's a rat, a murderer, a swindler, a liar, a cheater and a traitor, and those who aren't blatant villains are murdered without fanfare, then you will probably get a lot more out of it; but for those who aren't already interested in this kind of dark, cynical, ugly movie before popping the blu-ray into the player, nothing here is likely to inveigle you into a change of heart.
