Tag Archives: #guyritchie

Wrath of Man

Posted on by

Release: Friday, May 14, 2021

👀 Theater

Written by: Guy Ritchie; Marn Davies; Ivan Atkinson

Directed by: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Jason Statham; Holt McCallany; Josh Hartnett; Jeffrey Donovan; Scott Eastwood; Andy Garcia

 

 

 

***/*****

Jason Statham is really not messing around in this dead-serious action thriller that reunites the British badass with director Guy Ritchie for the fourth time and in what feels like the knock-out round.

If you thought Fast and the Furious sported a grim-faced Stath, get a load of him in Wrath of Man, an action/heist thriller that feels pretty familiar save for its leading man’s solemnity. In this L.A.-set bullet-fest he plays an enigmatic man nicknamed H, full name neither important nor as cool. What really matters is what he is willing to do to find the fools responsible for murdering his son in broad daylight. Your basic revenge plot is given a shot in the arm from Ritchie’s custom-made narrative construction and stylish approach to shooting action, but it’s Statham playing it straight that warrants your full attention.

H has just been hired by Fortico Security, responsible for the transportation of large sums of cash for its big boy clients. In a delicious bit of foreshadowing, Terry (Eddie Marsan — The Gentlemen; Filth) makes the dangers of this job abundantly clear to his silent and brooding new hire, revealing that only a matter of a few days ago two guards and a civilian were gunned down during a violent robbery of one of the armored trucks. He continues, oblivious to H’s personal interest in said incident, by explaining this is why Fortico pays “the premium rate” to its employees. Threats lurk around seemingly every street corner, behind every bridge and in every metropolitan tunnel. And the man Terry has just brought on board is beginning to suspect they may well be lurking even closer to home than that.

At its core Wrath is a tale about the lengths a father will go to get revenge. But because it’s Guy Ritchie there are of course a couple of avenues branching off the main street. The screenplay [by Ritchie, Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, and evidently a loose adaptation of the 2004 French film Le Convoyeur (Cash Truck)] once again creates an ecosystem wherein nasty people and their nasty deeds collide with one another, often in nasty ways. In a Ritchie movie there is really no such thing as coincidence. Like in a Christopher Nolan blockbuster, it’s just a matter of time.   

In this case a subplot involving a group of highly trained military vets is interspersed with our hero’s (or is that anti-hero’s?) increasingly desperate search, which encroaches upon Quentin Tarantino territory in terms of violence. Led by Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan — Villains; Sicario) and featuring its own X-factor in Jan, played by Scott Eastwood who clearly relishes being the loose cannon, these equally desperate men are seeking a more handsome retirement fund by jumping armored trucks all over the city, eventually culminating in the grandaddy heist in which they plan to relieve the Fortico depot of some $150 million on Black Friday — a pulse-pounding display of force and tactics realized through one of the most brilliantly calculated set-pieces the 52-year-old writer/director has ever engineered.

Sustained, muscular action sequences like these remind you why Ritchie is paid the premium rate by his employers. The patently predictable beats of Wrath are absolutely the beneficiary of his violently poetic style. From the opening title sequence which comes on thick and heavy with an atmosphere of foreboding and a vague scent of man-sweat, through to the appropriately grim title cards fronting the major movements of the piece, Ritchie’s panache permeates every scene and helps elevate otherwise stock-standard developments. Sadly the ending is where the film is weakest and though dripping with ominousness no amount of style can cover up the creative deficiencies here.

Where it’s at its best though is everywhere where Ritchie normally excels, in the highly adrenalized action, in the way he Rubik’s cubes a straightforward plot into something more interesting. In the dialogue, which here is weighted down with dramatic heft instead of sent up for comedic relief. The acting from Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor; Black Hawk Down) isn’t exceptional, but for the most part the supporting players, when not unconvincingly shitting their knickers in moments where they should be steeling themselves, are serviceable in their own capacities and several of them come with their own fun little handles (the winner just has to be Hartnett as Boy Sweat Dave). The hulking Holt McCallany (Sully; The Losers) leaves a dent as the talkative Bullet, who takes H under his wing and shows him the ropes.

Through it all Statham remains morose and monolithic, never even entertaining the notion of bringing back Handsome Bob. He resembles more myth than man in this movie, and if you’re willing to accept a certain heightened reality you’re primed to enjoy the way the movie builds the mystique of the character, and the way Ritchie’s signature nonlinear story structure eventually brings his humanity, or what’s left of it, into the full light of day. H may not make for the most dynamic leading man but the core emotive force that propels him forward is obvious and ultimately just enough to make us feel invested in his blood-soaked journey.

SAD: Silent And Deadly.

Moral of the Story: The appropriately-titled Wrath of Man lives up to its promises of there being a lot of wrath and, well, a lot of man. Come for the Stath, stay for a surprisingly cold performance, one that carries the weight of several Statham-led projects all at once and which continues to prove his status as an A-list action star. 

Rated: a well-earned R

Running Time: 119 mins. 

Quoted: “We ain’t the predators. We’re the prey.” 

Here’s another trailer that likes to give most of the movie away. I “love” trailers these days.

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: impawards.com; uncrate.com

The Gentlemen

Posted on by

Release: Friday, January 24, 2020

👀 Theater

Written by: Ivan Atkinson; Marn Davies; Guy Ritchie

Directed by: Guy Ritchie

Starring: Matthew McConaughey; Charlie Hunnam; Hugh Grant; Michelle Dockery; Jeremy Strong; Colin Farrell; Henry Golding; Eddie Marsan

Distributor: STXfilms (USA)

 

 

***/*****

The Gentlemen appears as a sight for sore eyes for anyone hoping for Guy Ritchie to return to form. After a string of generic blockbusters that kicked off with Sherlock Holmes in 2009 and then lasted forever, it seemed pretty clear he was not returning to his old stomping grounds — the seedy, criminal underworld of London as depicted in indie hits Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1999) and Snatch (2000). And why would he? Franchise filmmaking has rewarded him. His “hot” Aladdin remake turned out to be really hot — grossing more than a billion dollars at the global box office last year.

Like a sequel, The Gentlemen is not as fresh as the early Cockney gangster films that put his name on the map but it is another example of the transformative effect of Ritchie’s style and process. His movies are litmus tests of his cast’s willingness to separate brand image from the bell-ends they’re compelled to become as well as their ability to adapt on the fly to his extemporaneous approach to shooting. His latest crime comedy features as many plot points, diversions and schemes as it does famous faces, and it does not disappoint when it comes to watching big-name actors trying to wrap their mouths around Ritchie’s barbwire dialogue. Some succeed more than others, but with the sheer size of The Gentlemen‘s roster, it’s a pretty high success rate.

Oscar-winner and proud Texan Matthew McConaughey passes muster as Mickey Pearson, an expat who left his poverty-stricken life in America thanks to a scholarship to Oxford. As many a McConaughey character is wont to do, he becomes a major cannabis advocate. What began as a small business venture selling to the stuffy students evolves into a massively profitable weed empire founded on (technically under) British soil and through violence and intimidation on the streets. When conspiring circumstances force the old man out of the game, he triggers an avalanche of plots and schemes as a long line of potentials vie to take his place upon the throne. But it will take more than pure business acumen to actually oust a king.

In the simplest terms, The Gentlemen boils down to a potential transaction between two savvy businessmen who both happen to be Yankees — Pearson and billionaire Matthew Berger (Jeremy Strong, who seems least at home in this environment). In Ritchie’s world trust, like political correctness, is always in short supply. There’s borderline none of it here, with Strong’s annoyingly nebbish (but at least well-dressed) Berger possibly in cahoots with even worse people. Rogue agent Dry Eye (Henry Golding, doing good work to separate himself from a recent string of hunky eligible bachelor types) blows through the narrative, utterly unconcerned about the damage he’s doing and whose business he’s worse for. His arrogance makes him a true threat to Pearson’s power and legacy. Themes collide full-force in one of the movie’s signature scenes wherein a hopeful Dry Eye offers to buy Pearson out at an exorbitant price. And it is bad form to decline such an offer when it’s so clear his time is up as ruler of this urban jungle.

The characters are certainly worth remembering but the other big part of the equation is the deliberately convoluted storytelling. The Gentlemen is ambitious to a fault. It’s daunting enough to keep up with this labyrinth of relationships, clandestine partnerships and double-crosses unfolding. But, as it turns out, this whole farce is taking place in the not-so-distant past. The details are relayed to Raymond (Charlie Hunnam), consigliere to the King of Kush, by a gloriously against-type Hugh Grant as Fletcher, a smarmy private investigator who is trying to blackmail those who have wronged Big Dave (Eddie Marsan), the editor of a British tabloid journal. The framing device — “let’s play a game, Raymond,” Fletcher pleads like a school boy with a dirty little secret — overcomplicates an already stuffed narrative.

It’s not as though nothing good has come of Ritchie’s rise to prominence in the mainstream. The Gentlemen is a crime comedy of noticeably increased scale. We’ve outgrown the neighborhood of card sharps, street brawlers and estate agents and moved to the international ring of truly bad blokes and drug lords. Here you’ll encounter everyone from low-ranking British Lords to sons of Russian oligarchs and at least two generations of Chinese gangsters. There’s also Colin Farrell running around trying to repay a debt after his ragtag group of MMA fighters ignorantly steals something they shouldn’t have. For what it cost to make The Gentlemen, Ritchie could have made Snatch and RocknRolla with money left over to blow on van loads of ganja. Bigger doesn’t always mean better, yet from a technical standpoint the movie justifies the price tag — the wardrobes snazzy and the production design a classy, sleek upgrade.

For all that is ridiculous and excessive about The Gentlemen, I can’t really complain. It’s just nice to have our Guy back.

Henry Golding taking the mickey out of Matthew McConaughey

Moral of the Story: Come for the cast, stay for the schadenfreude (and the insults). There aren’t too many good people here to root for. In fact, that’s part of what makes The Gentlemen interesting.

Rated: R

Running Time: 113 mins.

Quoted: “There’s only one rule in the jungle: When the lion’s hungry, he eats!” 

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed  written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com

The Marvelous Brie Larson — #6

Posted on by

Welcome back to another edition of my latest Actor Profile, The Marvelous Brie Larson, a monthly series revolving around the silver screen performances of one of my favorite actresses. If you are a newcomer to this series, the idea behind this feature is to bring attention to a specific performer and their skill sets and to see how they contribute to a story.

For the penultimate installment in my Brie Larson spotlight I’m focusing on a black comedy from British director Ben Wheatley. Considering I have seen only two of his seven films — High Rise and Free Fire — I am not what you would call a Ben Wheatley expert. But what I’ve seen of his work so far has been enough for me to consider him a pretty unique director. Again, it’s a small sample size but I’ve really enjoyed how distinctly different these two movies are. Pure, unbridled chaos and pitch-black comedy seem to be the only things these movies from the mid-twenty-teens have in common. Well, that and if getting a lot of high-profile actors to be in your movie is a talent, Wheatley is most definitely talented.

Free Fire is his first movie “set” in America, though the old print factory in Brighton, England makes for a perfect stand-in for a Boston warehouse. It’s an action-driven movie that plays out as if Guy Ritchie directed Reservoir Dogs, where the schadenfreude is in greater abundance than the bullets and the blood. Best of all, in a movie that features a ton of recognizable names, Brie Larson gets to play a significant role in it and she kills it — quite literally.

If you haven’t caught up with the dark pleasures of Free Fire, it’s streaming on Netflix right now.

Brie Larson as Justine in Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire

Role Type: Lead

Genre: Action/comedy/crime

Premise: Set in Boston in 1978, a meeting in a deserted warehouse between two gangs turns into a shoot-out and a game of survival.

Character Background: Justine, a kind of peacekeeper and one-woman coalition for reason and logic, was originally meant to be played by Olivia Wilde, but she ended up dropping out. I think Wilde is a really strong actor but I can’t see anyone else in this role. Larson’s eye-rolls and natural ability to deliver sarcastic quips are real treasures of this movie. Alongside her American, side-burned colleague Ord (Armie Hammer), she’s here to broker a black market arms deal between the IRA (represented primarily by Cillian Murphy) and a South African gun runner (played deliciously over-the-top by Sharlto Copley), one that goes hopelessly and hilariously awry thanks to an unforeseen event.

The screenplay (by Wheatley’s wife Amy Jump) provides her a really interesting arc. Justine is the lone woman amidst a pack of egotistical, volatile and fairly unsympathetic men. Early on she’s predictably dismissed as just a bit of scenery. When she’s not being referred to as “doll,” she’s being asked out to dinner in what has to be one of the least appropriate ask-someone-out-for-dinner situations ever. While her costars are by and large quick to demonstrate their instability and their sexism, Larson is keeping tallies, and her character’s own ulterior motives under wraps, waiting for the right moment to demonstrate her own penchant for opportunistic scheming.

Free Fire is a very simple movie, and that’s one of its great strengths. Larson describes it as “an action movie making fun of action movies.” The plot is easy to follow and while all the gunfire eventually becomes kind of white noise it’s the characters that make it worth sticking around for. They may be here for different reasons but the thing they will all have in common, sooner or later, are bullet wounds and injuries.

Marvel at this Scene: 

Rate the Performance (relative to her other work): 

***/*****

 

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.imdb.com 

The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Posted on by

Release: Friday, August 14, 2015

[Theater]

Written by: Guy Ritchie; Lionel Wigram

Directed by: Guy Ritchie

In The Man From U.N.C.L.E., the stylish new action comedy from Guy Ritchie, Henry Cavill looks short compared to Armie Hammer. So I had to go look up the listed height of his less debonair co-star. Hammer stands a towering 6’5″. . . The size difference is notable, but more importantly it defines the film’s running sight gag — two larger-than-life men stumbling their way around a terror plot steeped in 1960s Cold War paranoia.

At the risk of re-opening fresh wounds, may I remind everyone that Cavill is no physical slouch. At 6’1″ he made for a pretty intimidating Kryptonian in the much-maligned Man of Steel (oooh, careful there, Tom), yet here he’s set up on more than one occasion as the submissive one, the American spy Napoleon Solo versus Hammer’s short-tempered Russian secret agent Illya Kuryakin. The two must join forces (but only after overcoming that awkward phase of being former sworn enemies on the streets of a Berlin torn literally . . . or, rather, politically . . . in half in the aftermath of World War II) to thwart the efforts of an international crime syndicate hell bent on global destruction, an organization led by the beautiful but dangerous Victoria Vinciguerra (Elizabeth Debicki).

Solo appears first. He briefly interrogates a young car mechanic named Gaby (Ex Machina‘s Alicia Vikander) who happens to be on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. With her cooperation in providing some personal background (e.g. the nature of her father’s work) Solo assures her he can help her escape the Iron Curtain. An exciting chase throughout the ruins of the city ensues when the pair cross paths with Kuryakin, initiating one of several impressively choreographed stunt sequences that Ritchie has by now mastered. It isn’t as quickly paced or as vicious as those featuring in his signature early works. If anything, U.N.C.L.E.‘s suavity is antithetical of the behaviors of those brazen British blokes of the late ’90s and early 2000s. But don’t make the mistake of equating Ritchie’s tempered approach with a boring film.

In fact his style might never have been better. His ability to generate comedy out of the sheer physicality of his leads trumps the familiarity of the screenplay (written by Lionel Wigram and himself). Cavill and Hammer get along great but there’s something more striking than their chemistry, a chemistry that makes sequels seem all but inevitable. How ridiculous are these guys in the roles of secret operatives? Even with dark pasts, the likes of James Bond, Jason Bourne or even Big Chris don’t occupy the same kind of space. Hammer, who, once again, has four inches on Cavill’s imposing frame, takes on a character simmering with intensity and anger who must stuff his emotions down for the sake of the mission; Cavill, considerably more charming and well-adjusted, can still be a brute when push comes to shove. And yet, if Ritchie allowed the pair to play it straight the film would be bleaker and less enjoyable.

Ritchie also judges his female characters well, effectively emboldening any skeptical future director with the idea that it is, in fact, okay to cast curvaceous females in well-written, anti-damsel-in-distress roles. Vikander, though not quite as luminous as she was earlier this year as Ava, offers strong support in the form of a deceptively complex role, one that comes to bear the narrative’s crux — who exactly is an agent to trust in this time of turbulence and . . . erm, distrust? But it’s Debicki’s sinister Victoria, a descendant of tyrannical rule of some description, that is going to stand up to scrutiny. With what little screen time she is given Victoria is a true sadistic. A femme fatale if there ever was one. Of course, the film has a duty to provide more general entertainment so she’s not untouchable. Her demise is actually one of the movie’s missteps, but hey, now I’m just being picky.

Familiarity with the 1960s TV series isn’t a requisite, nor is experience with the director’s previous outings. Ritchie appeases with a Sherlock Holmes-esque touch — it isn’t probably what die hards are going to be looking for but even they are likely to come to accept this for what it is — and crafts a story that, while not wholly original, steadily absorbs through its key players’ charisma, slick cinematography and gorgeous production design. Expanding beautifully on the backs of a well-established core of enthusiastic performances, U.N.C.L.E. is as ridiculously enjoyable as it is ridiculous.

Recommendation: It’s not the most original story you’ll see this year but it’ll be a challenge to find a more enjoyable thrill ride, especially one dressed in the style of the 1960s. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is one of Guy Ritchie’s best films, and if you call yourself a fan of his brand of filmmaking you owe it to yourself to go pick up a ticket for this right away.

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 116 mins.

Quoted: “I was briefed on your criminal career. Your balls are on the end of a very long leash, held by a very short man.”

All content originally published and the reproduction elsewhere without the expressed written consent of the blog owner is prohibited.

Photo credits: http://www.impawards.com; http://www.imdb.com