'Wrath of Man' is the Macho-Man Movie We Need
#129: "Wrath of Man," "Monster," "Notting Hill," "State of Play"
Edition 129:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
In this week’s newsletter: Guy Ritchie is back with another gangster movie, Netflix dropped a surprisingly powerful racial drama, and Peacock just discovered their first hit original TV show. Then I’ve got a couple of streaming suggestions on Netflix that are the types of movies they don’t make anymore. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” the writer/director of Spotlight has a new movie coming out that transformed Matt Damon into someone I definitely knew growing up.
Wrath of Man
A movie like Wrath of Man should come out every weekend. Now, don’t take that to mean this movie is perfect, or even awesome…or especially good, for that matter.
But if a fun, funny, action-packed popcorn flick like this was going up on giant screens with surround sound every weekend, you can’t tell me people wouldn’t venture off the couch to the box office more often.
Nobody does replacement-level Hollywood movies better than Guy Ritchie, a writer/director who made a name for himself doing foul-mouthed cockney gangster movies before cashing in with big studio IP projects like a King Arthur adaptation, two Sherlock Holmes movies and the live action Aladdin — again, none that I’d especially recommend (ok, the first Sherlock movie slaps), but all of which would leave you satisfied for having bought a ticket to see.
Once Ritchie crawled out of the IP machine, he returned to form with The Gentlemen, a movie packed with the kind of brash, profane, witty characters that have become his signature. It’s one of the more purely entertaining movies in recent years, and legitimately funnier than pretty much every Comedy movie over the same span.
This iteration of Ritchie’s gangster-ism is a remake of a 2004 French film, set in a Los Angeles underworld that still teems with the sounds of a cockney accent (Ritchie’s other signature) thanks to star and frequent collaborator Jason Statham.
It’s a hard premise to describe without spoiling the movie, which jumps around in time to interlock puzzle pieces that supply a semblance of satisfaction at the end. All you need to know is that there’s a big heist at the center, with a handful of plot twists spiraling out in any direction.
But if I’m being honest, the movie felt like off-brand Ritchie. It was like a copy of a copy of a copy of an old CD (wow have I really reached an age where my references are dated?), or like some other lesser writer trying to write “A Guy Ritchie Movie.”
The elements are all there, but they’re faded versions of themselves. The characters aren’t quite as colorful, the banter isn’t quite as witty, the jokes aren’t quite as funny. None of his movies are “about something,” which I don’t mind except that the lack of sharpness is perhaps more obvious because of it.
What fills in that void is just completely over the top action. Ritchie is no stranger to violence in any of his movies, but the pulpy playfulness has been replaced here by aggro macho man-type fighting.
Which is to say, in short, that I came in hoping for RocknRolla and ended up getting something closer (in fact suspiciously close) to Den of Thieves.
But you know what movie is better than 80% of the IP crap they serve up at the movies these days? Den of Thieves!
I wanted to dislike this movie from the opening scene, which features some of the most painfully wooden dialogue I’ve witnessed in a long time. As the movie unfolded, however, it slowly won me over. The big picture narrative structure is clever, the visual stylings are still top notch (literally no one frames a man in a suit with a gun better than Ritchie, and that’s a BIG claim), and ultimately it’s impossible to resist the gruff charms of Statham.
If you set your expectations correctly, you’re going to have a really fun time checking out this movie at the theater (hopefully!) or at home.
Something New
Monster (Netflix): Part of me wonders how this racial drama would have been received had it been released soon after its premiere way back at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. That feels like a lifetime ago, before many of the themes in this movie became common knowledge and the movie and TV market got fully saturated with similar stories. Right now it’s a criminal trial movie that will hardly cause a ripple in the year of Mangrove or The Trial of the Chicago 7. Still, Kelvin Harrison Jr. gives an outstanding lead performance as a young man with a loving family and a bright future who gets implicated in a crime. But it’s not exactly like what you think — innocent boy, racist system — it’s a much more nuanced look at the gray area of a young man’s life and the razor’s edge between making it out and throwing it all away.
If the movie were made today, you certainly wouldn’t be able to get John David Washington in a small part as one of the other criminals (dude is now the lead in a Nolan movie), and the surprisingly compelling work of A$AP Rocky as the other defendant hits different a few years later. Did I mention Jeffrey Wright and Jennifer Hudson are the parents? This movie has talent everywhere, and the acting really carries what could be critiqued as a pretty heavy-handed premise.
Harrison is a star, joining the elite class of young black actors like Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield, Michael B. Jordan and John Boyega, though right now he plays sad-boy so well (thinking of Waves) his best comparison point might be Lucas Hedges. Either way, I can’t wait to see what his next 5-10 years bring.
Something Old
Notting Hill (1999, Netflix): Dropping this here for two reasons — first as a PSA because one of the very best rom-coms is leaving Netflix at the end of May, giving you a couple weeks to re-watch or (God forbid) catch it for the first time; and secondly another PSA reminder that Julia Roberts is the GOAT rom-com actress. Respect to Meg Ryan, but no. Drew Barrymore, Sandra Bullock and J-LO aren’t in the same league. And don’t you so much as mention Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon in this conversation. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can match up with the lineup of Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Runaway Bride, and of course, Notting Hill. It’s the best of the bunch, in my view, and not just because it matches her up with arguably the GOAT male rom-com actor in Hugh Grant. It’s the movie that launched a million fantasies of a normal Joe Schmo being able to land a movie star (still waiting on Lily James to wander into MY used book store, if ya know what I mean).
Something to Stream
State of Play (Netflix): The “movie that would never get made today” title gets used way too liberally, but ladies and gentlemen, we have a new leader in the clubhouse. I can’t tell which element of this is more of a time capsule of this specific moment in history: A) the $60 million budget spent on an adult drama with very little action about a newspaper story (Spotlight would get a third of that money 10 years later); B) the fact that back then you could get Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Robin Wright, Helen Mirren, Jason Bateman, Jeff Daniels, AND Viola Davis in the same cast (!!!); or C) the depiction of a newspaper with a giant newsroom full of journalists who are have the power to influence law enforcement, politics and public opinion. Mannn….those were the days.
Trailer Watch: Stillwater
Tom McCarthy wrote and directed Spotlight. Enough said. He’s earned my attention and viewership for the rest of his career. But then he goes and makes a movie named after a town literally an hour away from where I grew up, and gets Matt Damon to look and sound EXACTLY like thousands of dudes I knew from my childhood? Take my money! The plot appears to be an Amanda Knox-type situation, where an American girl gets accused of murder in France and her father heads over there to try to secure her freedom. It’s hard to tell too much from this trailer but like I said there are too many good pieces in place for this to miss.