Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham were integral to putting each other on the Hollywood map after the actor played a key role in three of the director’s first four features, but their careers have taken much different paths in the sixteen years since their last collaboration.
Statham is now firmly entrenched as one of the industry’s premiere action stars and has been for a long time, while Ritchie has ventured into many different genres outside of his original crime comedy wheelhouse to very mixed results. His Sherlock Holmes duology and Aladdin were big box office hits, but The Man from U.N.C.L.E. flopped despite being a great underrated spy flick and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword was a disaster whatever way you want to look at it.
The pair have clearly relished getting reacquainted after all this time, though, with Wrath of Man releasing nationwide today and espionage thriller Five Eyes currently shooting ahead of a 2022 debut. The former is a remake of 2004 French film Cash Truck, with Statham playing a mysterious courier responsible for shepherding hundreds of millions of dollars around Los Angeles before he reveals an ulterior motive for taking the job.
Reviews have been rolling in ahead of the movie’s theatrical debut, and at the time of writing it’s currently sitting on a solid Rotten Tomatoes score of 71% with over 90 opionions in the bag. The general consensus is that it’s a welcome deviation from Ritchie’s typical template in the action thriller realm, with Jason Statham delivering a reliably gruff display of badassery that fully earns the R-rating, so it would appear as though Wrath of Man is in with a real chance of topping the box office this weekend, especially when fans have been starved of action-packed original content for so long.
