Directed by Guy Ritchie
Written by Nicolas Boukhrief, Éric Besnard, Guy Ritchie, Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson
Starring Jason Statham, Holt McCallany, Jeffrey Donovan and Josh Hartnett
Running Time 1 hour, 58 minutes (I think they murdered the editor 😁)
Currently playing in theaters

by Rosalie Kicks, Editor-in-Chief, Old Sport

“Did you make a poo poo?”

There is a moment in Quentin Dupieux’s quirky, dark comedy-horror, Deerskin in which the character Denise (Adèle Haenel), a film editor, explains how for practice she recut Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) so that it would play in chronological order and discovered that the movie did indeed, “suck!”. 

I share this little vignette because, much like Pulp Fiction, Guy Ritchie’s latest flick Wrath of Man makes use of the non-linear storytelling mechanism. However, I am quite certain that no form of editing techniques could save this steaming pile or keep me from questioning why this was even made in the first place. 

Wrath of Man tells the story of H (Jason Statham), an enigma (or Dark Spirit, as the movie calls him) that one day walks into the Fortico company looking for a job as an armored cash truck driver. As he goes through the employment application process, it is clear to the audience that his fumbles are intentional and his goal isn’t just to obtain a paycheck. Nah. H, has a score to settle, is out for literal blood and apparently a mob boss of sorts who is on the hunt to find the person that killed his son.

This is a simple plot with a terrible execution. The filmmaking and writing decisions are unnecessarily complicated and result in an extremely convoluted mess. Personally, I like my action flicks with frantic car chases, one liners, minimal dialogue and suave/smooth criminals. There is very little of that present here. Sure, there are a lot of name brand actors that showed up: Jason Statham, Holt McCallany (can we please bring back Mindhunter please and thank you), Josh Hartnett and Jeffrey Donovan, but no one stands out as there is nothing particularly significant about any of the characters. Except for maybe H, despite not even being given even a first name. I suppose one could surmise that H stands for “Hero” but I have a hard time calling someone a hero that shoots down anyone and everyone that gets in his path as a way to pay retribution for killing his son. Especially when the character seems to show no remorse in the sons and daughters he has killed.

Statham sporting khakis and saying lines like “did you make a poo poo?” make it hard to take any of it seriously, though. One could say they attempted to flesh out the character of Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan) who leads a group of mercenaries on various cash truck robberies with “military precision” but with the lack of backstory or motivation behind their crimes there were no stakes. 

Intertitles containing dates that are supposed to create a timeline fly on the screen causing nothing but frustration. Then there is the dialogue. In conducting some research I uncovered that Wrath of Man is an english language remake of the french flick, Cash Truck (2004) written by Éric Besnard and Nicolas Boukhrief and directed by Besnard. I have not personally seen the original version and therefore can’t speak to the differences between the two stories. However, what I can say is that everything about Wrath of Man appears to be dated. The decision to create a film utilizing a non-linear storytelling technique… this was a choice that, to me, screams nineteen ninety nine. It was completely ineffective. It is also quite baffling that in 2021, Hollywood is still OK (not that it ever was OK) to write homophobic jokes into scripts and then go on to produce said writing in big budget blockbusters. This movie is another Hollywood experiment in which cash is thrown into the fire, only to find that it does indeed turn to ash. 

If you’re looking to watch an entertaining movie this weekend, maybe check out the Turner Classic Movie Festival on HBOMax or I recommend watching Deerskin, a flick with a swift run time, witty dialogue and a man seeking the most killer fashion.

Deerskin is available to watch here.