Director Guy Ritchie talks about Jason Statham and WRATH OF MAN

Together, their early films redefined the action movie genre. Now, for the first time in more than 15 years, Jason Statham and director Guy Ritchie team up for the revenge thriller WRATH OF MAN.

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.”

“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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.  WRATH OF MAN will be in theaters on May 7, 2021.