Wrath of Man: Dismay of viewer

Wrath of Man (2021) • View trailer

Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and relentless violence

By Derrick Bang

I miss Guy Ritchie.

 

I miss the British director who burst onto the scene with snarky crime thrillers such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, populated by arch characters with improbable names such as Hatchet Harry, Barry the Baptist, Franky Four Fingers and Bullet-Tooth Tony, all bumping each other off in ways that would have been appalling, were they not so darkly hilarious.

 

As "H" (Jason Statham, second from left) begins his first day on the job, Bullet
(Holt McCallany, far left) introduces him to Hollow Bob (far right) and
Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett).

That Guy Ritchie attempted to go mainstream a decade ago, with uneven results, by tampering with pop-culture icons such as Sherlock Holmes and Napoleon Solo (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.)

 

Happily, the original Guy Ritchie returned with 2019’s The Gentleman, another cheeky crime thriller leavened by the writer/director’s caustic sense of humor.

 

Alas, that Guy Ritchie is AWOL in his new film. Wrath of Man hasn’t a single wry chuckle in its dreary 118 minutes; it’s nothing but a grim revenge saga with far too much collateral damage to be enjoyable on any level.

 

It’s not fun, merely tedious. No snark. No attitude.

 

It’s also a disappointing reunion with star Jason Statham, who was introduced — nay, detonated — in Lock, Stock and Snatch. Statham also isn’t fun here; he’s merely a grim rage machine, in an under-developed role that could’ve been played by any number of grade-C action stars.

 

The sole Ritchie touch evident — in a script co-written with Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson, and adapted from the 2004 French thriller Le Convoyeur — is the clever, non-linear structure that teases us with partial details, until finally Revealing All during the third act.

 

But that’s hardly enough to hold our interest, when surrounded by so many one-dimensional characters.

 

Maybe the Los Angeles setting is to blame. Ritchie needs to operate in his native Merry Olde, where British wit is an institution. Everybody knows that Los Angeles has no sense of humor.

 

Anyway…

 

After a deadly ambush on one of its armored vehicles, L.A.-based Fortico Securities replaces one of its slain guards with tight-lipped Patrick Hill (Statham), who immediately is dubbed “H.” He barely passes the necessary driving, behavior and shooting tests administered by the veteran Bullet (Holt McCallany), who nonetheless speaks up for the new recruit, despite the doubts of depot manager Terry (Eddie Marsan).

 

Fortico handles the transport of major cash sums that — for one reason or another — can’t be processed via banks (a good option for marijuana dispensaries). 

 

Honest Thief: Routine, but enjoyable

Honest Thief (2020) • View trailer

Three stars. Rated PG-13, for violence, crude references and brief profanity

By Derrick Bang

The Taken series — starting with the first one, back in 2008 — turned Liam Neeson into an action hero, which he has embraced enthusiastically.

 

And who can blame him? Strike while the iron is hot.

 

Forced to go on the run with Tom (Liam Neeson), whom she suddenly realizes has been
concealing a lot about himself, Annie (Kate Walsh) begins to worry about her own
life expectancy.

Director Mark Williams’ Honest Thief — available via Amazon Prime — is an unremarkable, cookie-cutter thriller; even so, Neeson brings his customary dignified gravitas to the project.

 

The script, by Williams and Steve Allrich, is pure formula: a reasonable set-up, a despicable villain, a token (brief) car chase, familiar co-stars, a cute dog and a satisfying conclusion. All told, it’s a reasonable way to spend 99 minutes on a mindless Friday evening.

 

Boston-based Tom Dolan (Neeson) has been a master thief for years, carefully sussing out banks with older, easy-to-crack vaults. The smoothness of his one-man jobs has seen him dubbed the “In-and-Out Bandit” — a moniker he loathes — by the media and FBI agents who’ve never gotten anywhere near nailing him.

 

Dolan has amassed $9 million … but, oddly, hasn’t spent a penny. His motivation, we eventually learn, leans more toward retribution than avarice.

 

He has a chance encounter with Annie Wilkins (Kate Walsh, refreshingly age-appropriate), a clerk at the storage facility where he hides his ill-gotten gains. They banter briefly; the room’s atmosphere shifts.

 

Flash-forward one year.

 

Tom and Annie are a solid item, and he has given up on bank jobs, but nonetheless feels guilty about having to conceal his larcenous past. (One wonders what he has told her, in terms of how he earns a living, but this script doesn’t worry about such details.) He therefore decides to negotiate a trade: He’ll turn himself into the FBI, and return all the money, in exchange for a lenient sentence with visitation rights.

 

Enter local FBI Chief Sam Baker (Robert Patrick) and agent Sean Meyers (Jeffrey Donovan), who take Tom’s phone call. They don’t initially believe him, because they’ve been hearing from all manner of nut-jobs who claim to be the In-and-Out Bandit. 

 

The irony here is amusing: Tom wants to come clean, but can’t.

 

Let Him Go: Riveting, but flawed

Let Him Go (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated R, for violence

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.6.20

Kevin Costner has matured well.

 

He projects an aura of calm self-assurance, leavened with a dry sense of humor, and a gaze that can shift — in a heartbeat — from tenderness to flinty anger. He excels at characters who may have yielded to baser instincts, back in the day, but who subsequently gained insight and patience … while retaining a hard edge.

 

Having traveled far in order to see their grandson again, Margaret (Diane Lane) and
George (Kevin Costner) are delighted when the little boy appears: a mere prelude
to what rapidly becomes an unselling situation.

He’s perfectly cast in the ongoing TV series Yellowstone, and the same is true of the role he plays here, in director/scripter Thomas Bezucha’s adaptation of Larry Watson’s 2013 novel. Let Him Go opens today in operational cinemas.

 

Bezucha’s treatment is long on characterization — particularly the quiet moments that define a relationship — and, regrettably, short on detail; the first act, in particular, omits all manner of necessary back-story, and leaves several key questions unanswered. One gets the impression that several expository scenes were left on the cutting-room floor.

 

Alternatively, this may have been deliberate; Bezucha focuses on his two protagonists, and how they respond first to tragedy, and later to an unexpected — and horrific — challenge. The genre is amorphous: equal parts thriller, mystery, latter-day Western and character drama, leavened with a subtle slice of social commentary.

 

At its core, though, this is a story about mothers and sons.

 

The setting is Montana, in the early 1960s. Retired sheriff George Blackledge (Costner) and his wife Margaret (Diane Lane) share their ranch home with their adult son James (Ryan Bruce), his wife Lorna (Kayli Carter), and the couple’s newborn baby, Jimmy. Margaret and James break horses for a living; the income is modest, but enough to keep them comfortable.

 

We sense that Lorna is an uncertain new mother, easily intimidated by the far more capable and assertive Margaret, who — in turn — isn’t sufficiently attentive to her daughter-in-law’s insecurities. Such subtleties hit the back burner when James suddenly dies of a broken neck, when thrown from his horse.

 

Bezucha abruptly flashes forward three years, to the day Lorna marries Donnie Weboy (Will Brittain). (Where did he come from? How did they meet?) Donnie joins the Blackledge household, but the fit feels wrong; Margaret’s suspicions are confirmed during a visit to town, when — unseen — she witnesses Donnie striking both Lorna and Jimmy (now played, alternately, by twins Bram and Otto Hornung).

 

Some brief period of time passes, at which point George and Margaret waken one morning to discover that Donnie, Lorna and Jimmy are gone, having departed in the middle of the night. (Why then? Given what subsequently transpires, why would Donnie have waited even a day to run off with his new family?)

Sicario: Day of the Soldado — The sophomore curse strikes

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for violence, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang

2015’s Sicario was an impeccably self-contained story that resolved in just the right manner. Under no circumstances did it require a sequel; conceptually, that would be like demanding a sequel to Casablanca.

When unforeseen events separate them from the rest of
an American mercenary force, Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro)
wonders how best to protect Isabel (Isabela Moner) ...
and, indeed, if he should bother.

But Hollywood rarely is guided by art, when commerce stands ready to interfere. Sicario proved unexpectedly successfully, and actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan was on a roll, having also delivered the terrific original scripts for 2016’s Hell or High Water and last year’s Wind River.

In fairness, it perhaps could be argued that Benicio Del Toro’s mysterious Alejandro, by far the most intriguing character in Sicario, deserved another look.

Sheridan gave it a good try. At its best, Sicario: Day of the Soldado has the multi-layered, parallel storylines that made 2000’s Traffic so compelling (and which, coincidentally, brought Del Toro an Academy Award). But Sheridan’s writing isn’t nearly as tight this time; a few plot details are fuzzy, and at one point simply daft.

More conspicuously, the film stumbles its way to a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion. The final 10 to 15 minutes feel as if director Stefano Sollima impulsively handed the reins to somebody far less qualified. Director Denis Villeneuve did a far superior job with the first film.

That said, Sheridan certainly cooks up a disturbing premise, which feels like a logical extension of our fear-driven world.

A pair of seemingly unrelated suicide bomber events — one during a foiled illegal immigrant crossing at the Mexico/Texas border, the other in a suburban Kansas big-box store laden with shoppers — leads U.S. intelligence agencies to an alarming conclusion: that Middle East terrorists are being ferried to Mexico by tanker ships “conveniently” ignored by Somali pirates, and then concealed among hopeful immigrants guided across the border by drug cartel traffickers.

Responding to demands from the (unseen) U.S. president that something be done to stop this, Secretary of Defense James Riley (Matthew Modine) summons CIA Deputy Director Cynthia Foard (Catherine Keener) and her favorite mercenary “fixer,” federal agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin). The latter has become darker, scarier and more cynical since the case he shared with Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer, in Sicario; he now believes that a desired end justifies any means.

Trafficking has become epidemic, Matt reasons, because of greed-inspired harmony between rival Mexican cartels. Provoke a war between cartels, and that accord will cease in a violent heartbeat; the resulting chaos will put an end to terrorist trafficking. (This conclusion seems unduly optimistic.) And the best way to create an internecine cartel war lies not with killing a king, but with kidnapping a prince.

Or, as it turns out, a princess.

Sicario: Bleak depiction of the failed war on drugs

Sicario (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for strong violence, grisly images and profanity
By Derrick Bang

Mexico probably won’t think very highly of this film.

Indeed, a formal state department complaint wouldn’t be surprising.

When Kate (Emily Blunt) demands to know more about the increasingly complicated and
morally questionable government "mission" in which she has agreed to participate, she
gets only vague answers from Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro, left) and Matt (Josh Brolin).

But first-time writer Taylor Sheridan can’t be blamed for responding to the increasingly grim headlines that keep erupting south of the border, and it’s not as if any of the events depicted in this drama exaggerate reality. The truth probably remains worse.

And Taylor’s “needs must” notion of a possible U.S. response is more than tantalizing; it feels utterly reasonable. And, frankly, scary.

Better still, Taylor has found the perfect colleague in Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, who most recently mesmerized us with 2013’s scary kidnap drama, Prisoners. Villeneuve’s films aren’t merely suspenseful; they’re nervous-making to a degree that prompts disquieting nightmares for days (weeks?) to follow.

He applies the same touch to Sicario, a ripped-from-current-events drama that paints a discouraging portrait of the escalating narcotics border war between the United States and Mexico: a war that we’re clearly losing, as portions of Mexico slide ever closer to becoming failed states. Assuming they haven’t already failed.

We meet our protagonist, Arizona FBI agent and kidnap-response team leader Kate Macer (Emily Blunt), during a raid on an outwardly ordinary suburban home in an average American neighborhood. Kate, steadfast partner/friend Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) and their colleagues encounter resistance and gunfire: an oddly protective response, given the apparently empty house.

But it isn’t empty, as Kate soon discovers. In fact, the residence — clandestinely owned by the leader of a Mexican drug cartel — is a shocking horror.

Back at base, Kate is surprised to find herself profiled by a pair of outsiders: Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), introduced as some sort of State Department task force leader; and a quiet, shadowy individual known only as Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro). Both offer Kate the opportunity to join them in a bold operation designed to “make a statement” and truly do something about a situation that continues to escalate beyond control.

Think carefully before answering, Kate’s boss (the always reliable Victor Garber) warns her. The unspoken implication: The operation might exceed jurisdictional boundaries.

No matter. Kate’s in.