Movies - Wrath of Man - Discover the Red Band trailer

By Mulder, 29 april 2021

Wrath of Manis an upcoming action thriller film written and directed by Guy Ritchie, based on the 2004 French film, Cash Truck by Nicolas Boukhrief. It is Ritchie's fourth directorial collaboration with lead actor Jason Statham, following Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch (2000), and Revolver (2005).

It was announced in October 2019 that Guy Ritchie was writing and directing an English language remake of the 2004 film Cash Truck, with Jason Statham set to star. Filming began in November 2020 between Los Angeles and London, with Scott Eastwood, Jeffrey Donovan, Laz Alonso, Josh Hartnett and Niamh Algar added to the cast, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer taking on domestic distribution for the film. The film was set for release on January 15, 2021, but was pulled off the January date due to the COVID-19 pandemic and later rescheduled for April 23, 2021, and was later pushed back two weeks to May 7

Together, their early films redefined the action movie genre. Now, for the first time in more than 15 years, superstar Jason Statham and visionary director Guy Ritchie team up for the explosive revenge thriller Wrath of man. After a deadly ambush on one of its armored cars, Los Angeles-based Fortico Securities hires a mysterious new employee, Patrick Hill (Statham), who becomes known simply as “H.” As he learns the ropes from partner Bullet (Holt McCallany), H initially appears to be a quiet, keepyour- head down type simply there to do a job and earn a living. But when he and Bullet become the targets of an attempted robbery, H’s formidable skills are revealed. Not only is he an expert marksman who’s equally adept at hand-to-hand combat, but H is also fearless, ruthless and lethal.

In truth, H is an undercover crime boss desperately searching for a way to avenge the murder of his beloved son. His quest takes an expected turn when a cadre of ex-military men, led by the clever, calculating Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan), plots a once-in-a-lifetime heist that will bring them a windfall of millions. What they fail to realize is that the high-stakes job will also set them on a violent collision course with the wrathful H.

Based on the French film Le convoyeur, Wrath of Man features an all-star cast including Jason Statham, Holt McCallany, Jeffrey Donovan, Josh Hartnett, Niamh Algar, Laz Alonso, Scott Eastwood and Eddie Marsan. The film is directed by Guy Ritchie from a screenplay by Ivan Atkinson, Marn Davies and Guy Ritchie. Bill Block and Atkinson are producers. With their gleefully fast-paced, anarchic 1990s hits Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, groundbreaking filmmaker Guy Ritchie and imminently watchable star Jason Statham took cinema by storm. Those acclaimed films established Ritchie as a relentlessly inventive director with a singular approach and announced Statham as a charismatic leading man who could easily command the screen while cracking skulls and cracking wise. Although the duo continued to work together over the years, after 2005’s Revolver, their busy big-screen careers diverged—until now.

Wrath of Man reunites filmmaker and star once again, though there’s no question this script is thematically darker and far less blackly comic than any of their previous collaborations. Based on the 2004 French thriller Le convoyeur, the story opens with Statham’s taciturn H applying for a job with Fortico Securities in the wake of an armored car heist that left several casualties. What his bosses fail to realize is that H isn’t simply looking for a paying gig—he’s a ruthless crime boss on a mission to find those responsible for the murder of his only child, determined to exact retribution for their actions. As the time-shifting narrative unfolds, secrets are revealed, leading to a shocking all-out confrontation that pits H against a squad of enemies.

From the start, Ritchie realized there was only one actor perfect to play H, and it was Statham. “I’ve always been very keen on Jason Statham as an actor—in fact, I was the first person to use Jason Statham as an actor in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I always thought that he should be a movie star, and I’m very happy to see he has become one. He’s been on his journey, I’ve been on mine. But it felt like we should reunite, and I thought this would be the perfect story for Jason and me to be reunited on. It’s not funny, this film. It’s serious. It’s very aggressive. We deal with the themes of vengeance, family, the sins of the father being visited onto the son.” As it happens, the star needed little in the way of convincing. “It was as simple as calling him up and giving him a two-minute pitch on what that film was,” Ritchie says. “Neither of us overthought it. We liked the premise. We were both available at that moment in time. Many films are really about the convenience of finding two people that want to make the same movie at the same time. I feel as though this film really does what it says on the tin—which is Jason Statham in an intelligent genre movie about revenge.”

The actor says he sparked to the drama of the story, the mystery surrounding his character and the way the narrative slowly reveals H’s true motivations.“It gets very dramatic because of the stakes at hand,” says Statham. “H is forced to play people a certain way to figure out who they really are, but in the end, someone is going to pay a price.” Given the intense nature of the subject matter, Ritchie and Statham agreed that the violence meted out on screen should be gritty and visceral. The approach was something of a departure for the filmmaker but one that ultimately served the story.

“Guy wanted to keep this very real and not have me do cool and slick movements,” explains Statham. “His way of achieving that is with an on-the-day type of organic approach, where you get into the space and figure out what the character is going to do in the specific situation he is in as the tension builds… I believe it helps create the sense of realism we are after. It’s very hard for a director to provide that nowadays, unless you are so confident that you know exactly what you want to capture through the lenses of the camera; but Guy does.”

H (Jason Statham)
No one plays a tough guy like Jason Statham. The English actor has built a career bringing hardcharging, vengeful men to the screen in such films as The Transporter, Crank, The Expendables and The Mechanic, among many others. He also happens to have a remarkable facility for comedy—this is an actor who has a way with a deadpan one-liner and even sent up his actionmovie persona in the 2015 movie Spy. Yet Wrath of Man challenged Statham to portray an exceptionally menacing character, a father hollowed-out by grief who nevertheless retains his ability to assuredly navigate a criminal underworld. “He’s cold, intelligent, focused and driven,” says Ritchie of the character, who spirals into obsession as he searches for those responsible for his son’s murder. Still, the pain that drives him is entirely relatable. “I see him as a complicated guy who above everything is a father,” says Statham, who has one young son, Jack, with his wife, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. “Even though I became a father quite late in the game, I feel everything rotates around that in my life. So, to have it removed is an unimaginable sort of horror to deal with. You wonder how you would come back from losing a son or a daughter, as it seems unimaginable. These are conversations I had with Guy regarding my character.” The rapport that Ritchie and Statham had established in their earliest days of working together served them well, as they shared the same perspectives on both the character of H and the film itself. Despite having not worked together for well over a decade, they easily fell back into a productive creative rhythm. “We have both come a long way since we started working together over 20 years ago,” Statham says. “What you really want to do in a situation like this is see if anything has changed, but the truth is that it hasn’t. I fell in love with this profession thanks to a lottery ticket that Guy handed me called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” “He doesn’t look like he’s aged a day which is the other strange thing,” Ritchie adds of the actor. “I don’t know what he’s up to. He’s still in great physical nick.”

Bullet (Holt McCallany)
To build out a powerhouse ensemble of actors around Statham, Ritchie turned to some of the most gifted talents working today Chief among them was Holt McCallany, most recently seen in David Fincher’s acclaimed FBI profiling drama Mindhunter. McCallany plays Bullet, a former soldier and a Fortico Securities employee who takes an immediate liking to H. Determined to show the newbie the ropes, Bullet introduces H to the rest of the crew and partners with him to help him learn the ins and outs of the armored truck company’s daily schedules. “He’s generally an extroverted and gregarious guy, but he’s dissatisfied with his life and his prospects since leaving the military,” McCallany says of the character. McCallany took an immediate liking to Bullet, noting that he saw the character as “charming and fun-loving” with “a great sense of humor.” But the actor also homed in on a connection to an action movie icon that had a profound personal pull. “When I was a boy, my favorite actor was Steve McQueen,” McCallany says. “My mom was an actress who had [worked] with his first wife, a lady named Neile Adams. They would occasionally come by, and I would get to meet Steve. I just thought that Steve was the coolest actor in the world, and his film Bullitt is the one that critics often described as capturing his star quality more than any of his other films. So, in the back of my mind, I’m reading this, and I’m thinking of it as an homage to Steve McQueen.” At first, neither H nor Bullet realizes that the other is operating with a secret agenda—though Bullet begins to harbor suspicions about his new partner after they encounter a group of would be robbers who plan to steal cash from the armored car they’re driving. “Bullet has a lot of admiration and respect for H because H is clearly a very talented and a very capable kind of a guy,” McCallany says. “When he foils an attempted robbery, Bullet gets a glimpse of not only his ability as a fighter but also his resourcefulness and the way that he responds under pressure. He is very impressive. But at the same time, this causes Bullet to begin to become a little bit suspicious of him: Why is it that such a talented guy who is so together has found himself in this relatively low-paying security job? Bullet begins to ask himself whether there is a little more than meets the eye to H?”

Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan)
Every antihero needs a worthy foil. In Wrath of Man , that character is Jeffrey Donovan’s Jackson. But Jackson is not a conventional movie bad guy—he’s a veteran, a husband and a father of two who is desperate to earn a living to care for his family yet left with little recourse to do so. Notably, thanks to the script’s innovative, perspective-shifting structure, Jackson’s identity and his motives until the film’s nail-biting third-act. “A bad break in Afghanistan caused him to be discharged dishonorably, which means he’s pretty much a felon, and he can’t make a living,” explains Donovan, known to audiences for his role in the 2020 film Let Him Go and for his work on television series including Fargo and Burn Notice. “He has to make ends meet in any way he can. He’s a highly skilled soldier, but there’s not a lot of jobs for soldiers without weapons. So, he comes up with an idea to start knocking over cash trucks. He thinks it’s a victimless crime.” To help him in his scheme, he recruits many of the soldiers he led during their tours of duty in the Middle East. “These guys all served together in the same unit,” Donovan says. “Jackson was their sergeant. They’ll do anything for him, and he’ll do anything for them. They don’t want to kill anybody. They don’t want to hurt anybody. They’re just trying to provide for their families. “These are insured cash trucks—[the guys on Jackson’s crew all look at it like] we’re just taking money from the banks. They’ll get reimbursed. “Every criminal thinks they’re not a criminal, and Jackson’s no different,” Donovan continues. “I think that he has a lot more honor than most people, the way he treats his crew and treats the victims in the heist. But with any good plan, it just goes horribly wrong, and the stakes just keep getting higher. He’s got to up his game—and that’s when shit happens.”

Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett)
One of the colorful complement of Fortico employees, Boy Sweat Dave arguably has the distinction of the film’s most unforgettable moniker. “What I’ve noticed about all of Guy’s films is that people tend to use each other’s names a lot on screen, and so the names have to be memorable,” offers actor Josh Hartnett. “I like that. I think it’s funny. That’s one of the signatures of a Guy Ritchie film.” Although Hartnett had not previously worked with Ritchie, he has much more than a passing familiarity with the action genre, having starred in such films as Black Hawk Down and Sin City over the course of his two-plus decade career. He easily found his footing in his Wrath of Man role. “He’s a wannabe antagonist toward H, but he’s someone who maybe is a little too comedic to be taken seriously,” says the actor of his screen alter-ego. “To scare other people off, he barks a lot more than he bites, and H obviously doesn’t respond to that. That’s why Boy Sweat gets sort of remanded to the background.” To inhabit the character more fully, Hartnett invented a rich backstory for Boy Sweat Dave before filming began. “My idea of Dave is that he wanted to be in the military but wasn’t able to for a multitude of reasons, mostly his temperament,” Hartnett says. “Then he moved out to Los Angeles to be an actor, and he found himself not being very good at that either. He thought he could employ both of those mentalities in a job like this where he gets to pretend like he’s tough but really, he’s a kid who grew up without a father who just wants to prove himself to everyone around.”

Dana (Niamh Algar)
Dana is the only woman working in the hyper-masculine confines of Fortico, but it’s an environment in which she’s learned to become comfortable, according to Irish actress Niamh Algar (Raised by Wolves). “I think Dana has always been a woman in a man’s world,” says Algar. “For me, I built this backstory that she grew up with a lot of brothers—hence she is able to take on all these lads within the team. She’s strong-willed and she’s quick and she can give back just as well as she takes. She’s part of this family of misfit guards. She’s got this tough exterior, but inside, she’s quite fragile and damaged.” When H arrives, she finds herself drawn to the new driver—but their relationship takes an unpredictable turn. “When H first comes onto the crew, it’s almost like he’s a new little toy to play with,” Algar says. “She sees this English lad and is quite taken by him. I think she is quite intrigued to find out a bit more about him because he is quite mysterious and guarded. She develops this relationship with him that becomes slightly romantic and from there finds out a lot more about him that she wished she hadn’t.”

Jan (Scott Eastwood)
There’s only one way to describe Scott Eastwood’s Jan: “Dangerous,” the actor says. “Very dangerous. He’s a hot head, very unpredictable.” Unquestionably the least trustworthy member of Jackson’s team, Jan is unabashed about his hunger for wealth and status, a trait that Eastwood chose to emphasize through the look that was developed for the character. “I wanted Jan to be flashy, to be very into his appearance and into his stuff, into things,” says the actor, known for his roles in such films as Pacific Rim: Uprising, The Fate of the Furious and Fury. “Guy wanted to roughen me up a little bit, so we decided to do a prosthetic scar and a contact lens that is specifically painted to create sort of a milky eye. I wear that for the entire film.” Eastwood was especially excited to perform the impressive array of stunts the film required: “It’s an action movie. We’re running around carrying guns, shooting people, fighting bad guys, fighting good guys. I’m a pretty active guy so stunts are fun for me. I think that’s probably where I excel.” Like all the characters who make up the rich tapestry of players in Wrath of Man , Jan’s hardly a run-of-the-mill gangster—even if he is involved in much of the film’s gun play. “The interesting thing about Guy Ritchie’s films is he loves to explore these criminal underworlds, but all the characters have their own flaws, their own issues,” Eastwood says. “They’re all going through something. You relate to the characters. Even if some of them might have done terrible things that you can’t relate to, you can relate to parts of them. It makes the films interesting because things aren’t black and white.”

Terry (Eddie Marsan)
The manager of the armored car depot, Terry is the hub around which all the drivers orbit. He assigns routes and monitors transactions—and in the wake of the robbery that opens the film, “He has a heightened sense of security and fear about losing another one of his drivers,” says actor Eddie Marsan, a veteran of several of Ritchie’s films dating to 2009’s Sherlock Holmes. “H comes in to the depot and at first seems very efficient and very calm, but Terry is very aware of the fact that there is something not quite right. He thinks that H is too dangerous in the sense that he wouldn’t follow procedure if there’s a robbery, that he would try to fend off the robbers. Terry worries about that because it is against procedure and he could lose another driver.” As it happens, Terry’s instincts prove entirely correct—though he certainly doesn’t need to fear for H’s safety. H can handle any situation he finds himself in. By contrast, Terry doesn’t exhibit that same sort of machismo, but that was fine with Marsan. “In a film that’s very alpha male, full of all these guys running around in bulletproof vests and armor, the guy in the office who is worried is quite an interesting character for me to play,” he says.

Despite the film’s Southern California setting, Wrath of Man was filmed largely in London, with the country’s industrial corridors standing in for the lesser-known concrete by-ways of L.A. The production did some limited exterior scenes in California, however, to give the movie the proper sense of place. It was an important choice given that Ritchie was keen to ensure that the film felt as realistic as possible—from the locations and the interplay among the characters to the rhythm of the action and the choreography of the heist sequences. “We wanted to make something that was credible and plausible as we could make it,” Ritchie says. “For example, the stunts in this film are not well-rehearsed. We wanted to keep it visceral and realistic in terms of how the action unfolded and how people really fight and not turn it into a balletic, over-choreographed fantasy of how people fight.” Before principal photography got underway, Ritchie assembled the entire cast for a live runthrough of the entire film—a method he’s dubbed the “Black Box.” Rather than gather around a table and read through the script, Ritchie prefers a more kinetic approach to getting a sense of how the production will take shape. With only limited sets and props, the actors literally perform the entire film in front of the cameras in the span of about eight hours, creating a kind of rough draft of every scene.

“What we try to do is create a roadmap that is not too definitive,” Ritchie says. “I try with the actors on the day to improve the dialogue or the plot as much as we can. In my experience, that usually improves by about 15%. It makes it more challenging on the actor because the actor has to start to learn those new lines quickly. It keeps them on their toes, and it can be unnerving.” Although McCallany was new to the black box process, the actor says he found it useful in determining his approach both to Bullet and how he might work with his co-stars in each scene. “You have an opportunity to put the whole film—or at least a large portion of it—on its feet right at the beginning,” McCallany says. “Very often in the filmmaking process, we’re just doing these little snippets of things. You’re never really doing long sequences or a majority of the performance all in one go. So, it gives you an opportunity to see the arc of the character in a very different way than you would in just the standard table read. They’re shooting everything, so it really is a very different experience than we normally have in an early rehearsal.” Adds Algar: “It’s a great introduction to see how Guy works. It gives you incredible insight into how he is going to work with you on the day. Guy changes a lot of the dialogue on the spot because he can hear it—he’s a man of instincts and he goes with his instincts. If it doesn’t sound right, he immediately has another line that you can substitute in, and it’s inevitably the right thing. He doesn’t hold actors back, and that’s really great.”

That ear for language is something that distinguishes Ritchie from so many of his contemporaries. Although the filmmaker has worked in numerous genres over the years, making films from low-budget indies to blockbuster studio fare, one of the throughlines that connects all his projects is the witty banter among his characters. “There’s a richness of language that exists in Guy’s movies that I’ve always been really drawn to,” offers McCallany. “Some of it is irreverent. Often, the characters can be ribbing each other, but it really epitomizes the way that men interact with each other—what Ernest Hemingway used to call ‘the language of men.’ This is something that Guy really understands.” Ritchie’s penchant for listening to the dialogue even as he’s evaluating the performances continues once cameras are rolling. Indeed, his films constantly evolve before the camera. Anything the filmmaker can do to improve the way the characters look, the way they move, the way they speak, the environment around them—even the story itself—he will do. But that approach demands that the cast and crew remain flexible and have both the confidence and the agility to adapt to any new demands they might face.

“Guy works like no one I have ever worked with before,” offers Hartnett. “He’s constantly coming up with ideas. He is very much in tune with what he wants to do. It’s something that seems to be sort of a spiritual experience for him, I guess—he’s looking for catharsis in the experience of creation. He is sitting there coming up with ideas as we work. So, when you walk in every day, you don’t know what you’re going to end up doing. I like that. I like that we have to react to the new twists and turns of the day.” Adds Eastwood: “He’s just a no-bullshit director, which I really appreciate and like. He’s a guy that gets it done, goes out there and does it.” Marsan, too, says that he appreciates the freedom that comes along with working on a set with that sort of spontaneous energy. “It’s more creative,” he says. “You feel more of a dance with the camera because the camera is very flexible and moves around you. Dramatically, if you feel a camera move with you or you’re doing something because you can feel the dramatic effect it will have on the film there and then, that’s much more enjoyable for me. You can almost feel the creative decisions being made on set.”

Ritchie is the first to admit that he places unique demands on his actors, though he had nothing but praise for his Wrath of Man cast. “They were all very generous actors,” the filmmaker says. “I have to tell you, I really enjoyed working with all these guys. They’re all very respectful and all very professional.” Even, it turns out, those who weren’t necessarily experienced actors— Grammy Award-winning artist Post Malone makes a surprise cameo in Wrath of Man , appearing in a confrontational scene with Statham’s H that stands out as one of the film’s most memorable sequences. “Post Malone is the loveliest man I’ve ever met,” says Ritchie. “He has fantastic manners. He’s incredibly polite, very professional, is prepared to work overtime, doesn’t complain. Honestly was a breath of enthusiastic fresh air to everyone on the set. Everyone was awed by the generosity of his spirit. He’s very creative and very collaborative. He could think very spontaneously and act very spontaneously.” As for working with Statham himself, Ritchie says his on-set dynamic with the actor has remained unchanged—their partnership is one based on true camaraderie and friendship developed over the decades. In fact, they’re already at work on their next project together, a spy project for Miramax that will include some of the Wrath of Man actors. “Jason and I have had the same relationship for the 22 years we’ve known each other,” Ritchie says. “Don’t think Jason and I have been angry with one another. I don’t think we’ve ever said a cross word to one another. He’s one of my best mates. There’s a lot Jason’s managed to juggle in his life very skillfully and with great wisdom. I really respect him as an actor and as a human being.” Adds Statham: “If all I did for the rest of my career is work for Guy Ritchie, I would be a very happy man.”

Synopsis :
A mysterious and wild-eyed new cash truck security guard (Jason Statham) surprises his coworkers during a heist in which he unexpectedly unleashes precision skills. The crew is left wondering who he is and where he came from. Soon, the marksman’s ultimate motive becomes clear as he takes dramatic and irrevocable steps to settle a score.

Wrath of Man
Directed by Guy Ritchie
Produced by Ivan Atkinson, Bill Block, Andrew Golov
Written by Guy Ritchie and Ivan Atkinson & Marn Davies
Based on Le Convoyeur (Cash Truck) Written by Nicolas Boukhrief and Éric Besnard and Directed by Nicolas Boukhrief
Starring Jason Statham, Scott Eastwood, Holt McCallany, Jeffrey Donovan, Laz Alonso, Post Malone, Josh Hartnett
Music by Chris Benstead
Cinematography : Alan Stewart
Production companies : Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Miramax
Distributed by United Artists Releasing (United States), Lionsgate (United Kingdom), Metropolitan FilmExport (France)
Release date : May 7, 2021 (USA), June 15, 2021 (France)

(Source : productions notes)