MISSION : IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING : Tuesday 20th May 2025.

I saw the heavily promoted, much hyped and highly anticipated M Rated 'MISSION : IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING' earlier this week, and this American spy action film is Co-Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Christopher McQuarrie. This film serves as a direct sequel to 2023's 'Mission : Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' and is the eighth and possibly the final film in the 'M:I' franchise. McQuarrie's previous feature film Directing output takes in his debut in 2000 with 'The Way of the Gun', which he would follow up with 'Jack Reacher' in 2012, 'Mission : Impossible - Rogue Nation' in 2015, 'Mission : Impossible - Fallout' in 2018 and 'Mission : Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' in 2023. The first seven films in this hugely popular and successful franchise grossed a total of US$4.14B at the global Box Office from combined production budgets of US$1.5B, with this eighth instalment costing somewhere in between US$300 and 400M, making it one of the most expensive films ever made. The film had its World Premiere screening in Tokyo on 5th May, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival on 14th May and it set for a worldwide release from this week onward although a handful of territories (including Australia) saw its release brought forward to 17th of May.  

Picking up two months after the events of 'Mission : Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' IMF agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, who also Co-Produces here) in the opening scene places a VHS tape into his recorder and its plays back a message from the US President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett) who urges him to come out of hiding and to hand over the two piece cruciform key which he still has in his possession. Once played the tape self destructs within five seconds. And so the trusty band of IMF Agents reassemble and with Ethan and Grace (Hayley Atwell) they go after Gabriel (Esai Morales) who is looking to take control of the 'Entity A.I.' and to bring the world to heel. However, Gabriel captures Ethan and Grace and coerces Ethan into retrieving the core module, revealed to be the 'Rabbit's Foot' (reference 'M:I:III'), from the sunken Russian submarine Sevastopol for him, which would give him control over the Entity's source code. Ethan and Grace escape with the assistance of IMF agent Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and new recruits Paris (Pom Klementieff) and Theo Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis). Following a foot chase in a system of disused tunnels adjacent to London's Underground train lines, in which Gabriel successfully evades Ethan, the team uncover a device that Gabriel used to communicate with the Entity, which shows Ethan a vision of a coming nuclear apocalypse. Ethan realises the Entity needs access to a secure digital bunker located in remote South Africa to ensure its survival.

Ethan sends his team, under the leadership of Benji Dunn, to retrieve the Sevastopol's coordinates, while he rejoins Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames) to disarm a nuclear device Gabriel planted in London. Luther tells Ethan that he developed a malware for the Entity called the Poison Pill, but that Gabriel had stolen it the night before while Luther was sleeping. Sacrificing himself, Luther stays behind in a vain attempt to stop the bomb, giving Ethan just enough time to escape the bomb's blast. 

Ethan surrenders to President Sloane, who urges cooperation due to the Entity's escalating control over global nuclear systems, with all but four of the world's nuclear armed countries still in control of their nuclear arsenals - Russia, China, the UK and the USA, with the other five having lost control to the Entity already. With only four days before it launches global strikes, Ethan convinces Sloane to let him act independently to locate the Sevastopol, against CIA Director Eugene Kittridge's (Henry Czerny) objections, and that of others including Serling Bernstein (Holt McCallany) the Secretary of Defence; General Sidney (Nick Offerman) the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs; Walters (Janet McTeer) the Secretary of State; Richards (Charles Parnell) the Director of National Intelligence; Angstrom (Mark Gatiss) Head of the National Security Agency; and Jasper Briggs (Shea Whigham) a US Intelligence Agent. 

Ethan's team travel to St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea, home to a Cold War–era sonar station that detected the Sevastopol's sinking. They locate former CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon) (reference 'Mission : Impossible'), who was exiled to the island decades earlier after a covert break-in at CIA headquarters, courtesy of one Ethan Hunt. Donloe reveals he memorised the Sevastopol's coordinates after recognising the sonar signature. As Grace, Benji, Theo and Donloe’s wife Tapeesa (Lucy Tulugarjuk), hold off an occupying unit of Russian special forces in a firefight, Donloe transmits the coordinates by Morse Code to Ethan, who by now has joined the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush in the North Pacific Ocean to dive to the Sevastopol wreck. 

Ethan takes a deep dive inside a specially designed suit used by the dive-master into the icy cold waters of the Bering Sea. After overcoming several obstacles inside the stricken Russian submarine, he retrieves the Podkova module containing the Entity's original source code, but accidentally triggers the wreck to slide down the continental ice shelf. Narrowly escaping through an empty torpedo tube but having to exit from his dive suit, Ethan suffers from decompression sickness and drowns during the ascent to the surface, but is rescued and revived by Grace and Tapeesa using a makeshift decompression chamber. Reunited with his IMF team, Ethan outlines his plan to use the Poison Pill to upload and isolate the Entity on a one of a kind five dimensional physical drive created by Luther before he died, and so trapping it from the outside world. 

Ethan suspects Gabriel is already waiting at the South African bunker with the Poison Pill, aiming to seize control of the Entity by forcing Ethan to surrender the Podkova module. The team arrives at the bunker in South Africa only to find it abandoned except for Gabriel and his henchmen. He reveals another nuclear device with a twenty-minute countdown, demanding the module. Ethan agrees, but the handover is interrupted by Kittridge, who wants the US to control the Entity. 

The bomb is activated in the ensuing gunfight in which Benji sustains a bullet wound to his stomach. Gabriel flees the scene, knowing that Ethan will pursue him. Paris performs emergency surgery on a critically injured Benji as he falls in and out of consciousness, while guiding Grace to reboot the bunker systems to trap the Entity. Donloe buys the team enough time for everyone to escape safely before the bomb detonates.

Ethan chases Gabriel in a biplane and climbs onto Gabriel’s plane mid-air. Gabriel fails to shake him off despite numerous attempts to do so, and jumps with a parachute while the plane is flying upside down, but is killed after hitting the plane’s rudder head first. Ethan finds a second parachute, escapes with the Poison Pill, and connects it up with the Podkova module mid-descent, so allowing Grace to finish the upload. 

Kittridge and Briggs find Ethan and land their helicopter close by to collect him. Kittridge is frustrated when Ethan hands over the destroyed module of the Sevastopol while Briggs, who is revealed to be James Phelps Jnr., the son of Ethan's original team leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight - reference 'Mission : Impossible') and makes peace with him. The IMF team reunites in London's Trafalgar Square at night time, where Grace gives Ethan the Entity, now safely isolated on Luther's 5D drive, and after acknowledging each other from a careful distance, the team fade into the crowd and go their separate ways.

Here, as with the previous three instalments, Director and Producers McQuarrie and Cruise have delivered us an action spectacular that doesn't let up on the practical thrills and spills, and death defying stunt work that this franchise is probably best known for. Cruise's commitment to his craft is on full display here once again as he pushes the boundaries of his stunt work all in the name of giving his audience a realistic experience to savour. The production values are top notch, but then for a budget of between US$300 and 400M that is to be expected, and the supporting cast are all on point. The plot however, left me feeling a little meh!, and how one man alone could save all of humanity from nuclear annihilation left me feeling just a tad incredulous. That said, 'Mission : Impossible - The Final Reckoning' is a fitting end, or so we are led to believe, to this multi-billion dollar taking franchise that has plenty of nods to those prior seven instalments, and leaves the door open for further offerings, should we choose to accept it, and whether Tom Cruise is up for another impossible mission to save 'those we hold close, and those we'll never meet'! At a running time of just ten minutes shy of three hours, this film will not leave you wanting. See it on the biggest screen you can.

'Mission : Impossible - The Final Reckoning' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE AMATEUR : Tuesday 15th April 2025

I saw the M Rated 'THE AMATEUR' earlier this week at my local independent movie theatre, and this American vigilante action spy thriller film is Directed by James Hawes and is based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Littell, which was previously adapted into a Canadian film that same year with John Savage, Christopher Plummer and Marthe Keller. James Hawes previous feature film making effort was 'One Life' in 2023, although he has Directed numerous TV series since the early 2000's, including multiple episodes of 'Doctor Who', 'Merlin', 'Penny Dreadful', 'Black Mirror', 'Snowpiercer' and 'Slow Horses'. The film was released in the US last week too, has so far grossed US$35M from a production budget of US$60M and has garnered mixed or average reviews. 

Here then, Charles 'Charlie' Heller (Rami Malek, who also Co-Produces here), is a brilliant yet deeply introverted CIA cryptographer, who as the film opens up is seen carefully unwrapping parts to restore an old Cessna single prop plane that was gifted to him by his wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan). Later that same day Sarah departs for London where she is attending a four day conference. She asks him to join her, but as usual he declines saying that he has too much important work to do at Langley. At the CIA's Decryption and Analysis division, Charlie has befriended a field agent nicknamed 'the Bear' (Jon Bernthal), and an anonymous source codenamed 'Inquiline'. 

Inquiline sends Charlie highly classified and heavily encrypted files that reveal Special Activities Centre Director and Charlie's boss Alex Moore (Holt McCallany) altered politically-motivated drone strikes as suicide bombings. Later that evening Charlie tries calling Sarah but he only goes through to her voicemail. The next morning Charlie subsequently is brought to CIA Director Samantha O'Brien (Julianne Nicholson), who informs him that Sarah has been killed in a terrorist attack in London. Charlie is disbelieving until he sees raw footage displayed on a TV screen in her office downloaded from a security camera in close proximity to the hotel where Sarah was shot execution style.

A grieving Charlie soon afterwards presents his own findings to Moore and his CIA Deputy Caleb Horowitz (Danny Sapani). After an arms deal gone wrong, four assailants took Sarah and others hostage, killing her before escaping. Charlie identifies the suspects, Belarusian criminal Mishka Blazhic (Marc Rissmann), South African ex-special forces operative Ellish (Joseph Millson), former Armenian intelligence officer Gretchen Frank (Barbara Probst), and elusive mastermind Horst Schiller (Michael Stuhlbarg), Sarah's killer. However, Moore and Horowitz insist they are working to take down Schiller's entire network, and as such tell Charlie to keep out. Determined to avenge Sarah, Charlie confronts Moore and Horowitz with his incriminating orders, which caused hundreds of civilian and allied casualties. Initially Moore brushes off the evidence laid before him, but Charlie then threatens to leak the information to the CIA Director and then the news channels. Charlie demands the available CIA resources to personally hunt down the four terrorists.

And so Charlie is sent off to train with Col. Robert Henderson (Laurence Fishburne) at Camp Peary. The gun-shy Charlie excels at bomb-making, but Henderson lays it out clearly on the line that he is simply not capable of killing anyone. Meanwhile, Moore and Horowitz mobilise a team of CIA operatives to search Charlie's home, office and anywhere he may have visited recently. They discover a CD he hid in a bar's jukebox, but realise he was bluffing when the CD is examined. Henderson is ordered to eliminate Charlie, who bugged the files he left in Moore's office, but he had already vacated his room and was on his way out of the country on a flight bound for London and then a train to Paris, using the fake ID documents he had been given by the CIA.

Charlie tracks down Gretchen Frank in Paris, following an on-line lock-picking tutorial to break into her apartment. He discovers Gretchen's appointment at an asthma and allergy clinic and takes a gun, but cannot bring himself to shoot her when she returns to her home. The next day he buys up all the lilies at a street florist shop, and he traps Gretchen at the clinic in a hypobaric chamber that he fills with the pollen extracted from the lilies. Charlie demands to know Schiller's location, but is unwilling to let Gretchen die and releases her. The pair fight, but she escapes to the street, followed in hot pursuit by Charlie, and is fatally struck by a passing van. Taking Gretchen's phone, Charlie catches a bus to Marseille where Henderson corners him in a bar, but he sets off an explosion in the mens rest room and escapes. 

He requests Inquiline's help and is smuggled to Istanbul, where Inquiline (Caitriona Balfe) reveals herself as the Russian widow of a murdered ex-KGB officer, having taken his place as Charlie's source some six years prior. They trace Blazhic to a luxury hotel in Madrid, while O'Brien learns Moore has sent Henderson after Charlie, and sends her own operative.

In Madrid, Charlie confronts Blazhic as he swims alone in the hotel's rooftop infinity pool perched sixteen storey's up between two towers. He has rigged scuba equipment to decompress the air between the pool's sheets of glass. When Blazhic refuses to answer any questions, Charlie at the press of a button shatters the glass and sends him plummeting to his death. He is nearly apprehended once again by Henderson, who is attacked by O'Brien's operative. In the ensuing struggle, Henderson is shot but kills the operative, allowing Charlie to escape once more. Horowitz realises that Charlie is communicating with someone by spotting an earpiece he is wearing in CCTV footage from the hotel. He tracks down Inquiline and sends a strike team from the CIA Field Office in Istanbul, and Inquiline is killed in a hail of rapid gun fire as she flees with Charlie in a car.

Charlie tracks down Ellish in Romania under the pretence of selling him missiles and traps him with an improvised explosive device that has a remotely activated motion sensor, forcing him to reveal that Schiller operates from a ship on the Baltic Sea. He takes Ellish's phone and leaves him to die in the explosion. Charlie arrives in Primorsk to spy on Schiller's operation. Bear confronts him in a dock side cafe, but Charlie refuses to end his personal vendetta, and so he leaves Charlie pondering his fate.

Charlie is captured and is taken aboard Schiller's ship, coming face-to-face with Sarah's killer. Schiller offers him a loaded gun and the chance to take his revenge. Standing over Schiller with the pistol pointed squarely at Schiller's head and within point blank range, he drops the gun and takes a seat. Charlie reveals that he just had to keep talking long enough as he hacked the ships control systems, steering it to the Gulf of Finland where Schiller and his crew are taken into custody by Finnish Police and Interpol. O'Brien goes public with her revelations about Moore and Horowitz who are later arrested for their unsanctioned operations. After being visited by a recovered Henderson, Charlie is seen taking his restored Cessna plane for its first flight.

With 'The Amateur' Director James Hawes has here delivered a fairly predictable by the numbers spy action thriller that is straight out of the Bourne, or Bond or M:I playbook, with locations spread far and wide, well choreographed action set pieces, but a plot that leaves a lot to be desired. That said it is still entertaining enough and Malek does his best at his portrayal of the CIA computer nerd thrust into a world that he is ill equipped to handle but nonetheless his very particular set of skills at the keyboard enable him to win the day over those bad terrorist types. It has a strong supporting cast with Holt McCallany and Laurence Fishburne as dependable as ever, but Jon Bernthal is wasted with about as much as three minutes in total of screen time out of a total run time of just a nudge over two hours. You can either choose to watch it at your local big screen Odeon or wait to catch it via streaming - either way you could do worse!

'The Amateur' warrants three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

NIGHTMARE ALLEY : Tuesday 25th January 2022.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'NIGHTMARE ALLEY' this week, which is an American neo-noir psychological thriller film Directed, Co-Written for the screen and Co-Produced by Guillermo del Toro whose previous film making credits take in 'Hell Boy', 'Pacific Rim', 'Crimson Peak' and the Academy Award winning 'Pan's Labyrinth' and 'The Shape of Water'. This film is based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham, and is the second feature film adaptation following the 1947 film starring Tyrone Power. The film has garnered generally positive Reviews and has recovered US$15M in Box Office receipts from its US$60M production budget so far, having been released Stateside in mid-December last year. It has also so far won fourteen awards and been nominated a further seventy-seven times (of which some of those nominations are still awaiting an outcome) from around the awards circuit. 

The film opens up in 1939, and we see Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper, who also Co-Produces here) dragging a bundled up body across the floor of a ramshackle dwelling and dumping that body under the floorboards. He then douses the body and the surrounding room with petrol, strikes a match, and walks out of the rural house perched on a hill as it becomes engulfed in flames. He gets on bus, and sleeps. When he wakes its nighttime and the bus has reached the end of the line. He gets out and walks toward a travelling carnival, ultimately securing a job as an employee (a carny) on that travelling carnival. When the carnivals resident 'geek' becomes ill, the owner Clem Hoately (Willem Dafoe) has Carlisle help him drop off the body at a nearby inner-city Church, on the promise of a steak and eggs dinner. Over dinner, Clem explains that he finds alcoholics or drug addicts, who are often men with a troublesome history, and coaxes them in with promises of a temporary job, somewhere to sleep and regular meals, but gives them alcohol that contains a few drops of opium tincture. He uses their gradual dependence to physically and mentally abuse them until they sink into madness and depravity, thus creating a geek for his carnival. Later that night Clem shows Carlisle where he stores the moonshine he brews to control the other carnies, warning him not to mistake it for the wood alcohol for pickling medical specimens he stores in jars nearby, for that stuff will easily kill a man.

After a lot of fetching and carrying, erecting and dismantling the big carnival tents and sideshows, often in the pouring rain, Carlisle lands a job with clairvoyant act Madame Zeena (Toni Collette) and her alcoholic husband Pete (David Strathairn). Zeena and Pete use an ingenious coded language system, devised by Pete, to make it seem that she has extraordinary mental powers, which Pete begins teaching to Carlisle. Pete and Zeena warn him not to use these skills to continue leading patrons on when it comes to the dead, which they refer to as a 'spook show'. They always tell their customers after the show that it is a deception for fear of people getting hurt. Meanwhile, as Carlisle becomes more and more familiar with their act, and he grows in confidence, he is attracted to fellow performer Molly (Rooney Mara) and approaches her with an idea for a two-person act away from the carnival, using his new found mentalist abilities. 

One night, after Pete asks Carlisle to secure him a bottle of Clem's moonshine, he gives Pete the wrong bottle (possible accidentally) and the old man dies the next morning in Zeena's arms from consuming wood alcohol. In the aftermath, Carlisle swears his love to Molly and reiterates his plan. She accepts, and they leave the carnival behind. Two years later, Carlisle has successfully reinvented himself as 'The Great Stanton', a mentalist act for New York's wealthy ruling class, together with Molly as his assistant, using Zeena and Pete's tried and tested techniques. During a performance, their act is interrupted by psychologist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), who attempts to expose their system of code. Stan's line of questioning allows him to gain the upper hand over Ritter, keeping their act safe while publicly humiliating her. He is later approached by the wealthy Judge Kimball (Peter MacNeill), who engaged Ritter to test Carlisle. He is now convinced of Carlisle's abilities and offers to pay him handsomely to allow him and his wife Felicia (Mary Steenburgen) to communicate with their dead son who died in Nomansland during WWII at the age of 23. Despite Molly's objections to the unwritten 'spook show' ruling, Carlisle agrees.

Ritter invites Carlisle to her office. She knows full well that he is a con man, but is nevertheless intrigued by his skills of mental manipulation. Through her recorded sessions with her clients, she has accumulated a wealth of potentially sensitive information about various members of New York's movers and shakers and the rich and famous. Sharing a connection, she and Carlisle begin an affair, and they conspire together to manipulate Kimball, with Ritter secretly providing private and sensitive information to fuel his pretence. She does this on the condition that she can start therapy sessions with Carlisle, based on complete honesty, who reveals his guilt over Pete's death, and his hatred of his alcoholic father, who he killed in their home before joining the carnival. 

Kimball introduces Carlisle to the powerful and very private Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), whose lover, Dory, died of a forced abortion. Despite warnings from Ritter that Grindle is dangerous, Carlisle begins to scam Grindle and starts to drink, having told her previously that he 'never' touches the stuff!. Ritter feeds information to Carlisle, which he supplements by doing his own clandestine investigations, to use against Grindle as revenge for him previously attacking her. She shows Carlisle a scar down her chest and abdomen she received from Grindle. Molly becomes increasingly uncomfortable, and upon learning of the affair with Ritter, leaves Carlisle. He begs her to stay, but she refuses, only agreeing to help him one last time. 

She poses as Dory for Carlisle's ultimate act: manifesting herself as Dory from the other side for Grindle so that he can ask for her forgiveness. However, he loses control of Grindle, who reveals himself to be a violent abuser of many women due to his guilt for Dory. He then clutches hold of Molly wrist before she can exit the escalating out of control scene and realises that his vision of Dory is a fake. Unknown to Carlisle, Grindle's head of personal security, Anderson (Holt McCallany), hears a radio broadcast announcing that Judge Kimball and his wife have been found dead in an apparent murder-suicide, because of Carlisle's promises to Felicia that they would be reunited with their dead son after their own deaths. She had shot dead her husband and then turned the gun on herself. Knowing that Carlisle was recommended to Grindle by the Judge, he goes to check on what was going down between the two.

Upon coming to the realisation that 'Dory' is fake, Grindle becomes enraged and promises to ruin Carlisle. A tussle breaks out between the two men and Carlisle beats him to death with repeated blows to the face, then kills Anderson during their escape by running over him, twice, in their car. As he begins to smash up their car to create the impression that it was stolen, Molly leaves Carlisle for good. Carlisle goes to Ritter for help but discovers she has been scamming him all along, revealing that she wanted revenge for what happened during their initial meeting. She speaks of her disappointment in realising that he was nothing more than a base money-driven petty criminal. She calls the Police and threatens to use her recordings of their sessions as evidence that he is mentally disturbed should he try to implicate her. Ritter shoots Carlisle in the ear, and he tries to strangle Ritter using the telephone cable with the line to the Police still open but as the Police arrive, he flees.

Wanted, injured, with no money, nowhere to go and only the clothes on his back, Carlisle jumps a train and hides behind a wall of chicken coups, as the Police search the carriages but find no evidence of him. He wanders around for years as an aimless alcoholic tramp. At his limit, he tries to get a job as a mentalist at another carnival. The owner (Tim Blake Nelson) turns him away but offers him a drink and a 'temporary' job as the new geek at the last minute, using the same patter that Clem recounted to him all those years previously. Carlisle accepts, laughing out, 'I was born for it'. Seemingly aware of his fate, his laughs turn to tears.

In 'Nightmare Alley' Director Guillermo del Toro has here hung up his all too familiar horror fantasy tropes and traded these in for a psychological melodramatic offering that is bathed beautifully in the colours and images of the era in which the film is set with the emphasis on meticulous detail, whilst still retaining the filmmaking DNA that del Toro is so renowned for. Cooper here shines in his role as the fractured tormented soul with regrets about his past 'indiscretions' but willing to brush these under the carpet for his share of the limelight and all the trappings of his success only for it to all come crumbling down around him that ultimately brings him full circle. And the other A-listers in supporting roles including Blanchett's femme fatale, Collette, Dafoe, Mara, Strathairn and Jenkins all give top notch performances that lend an authenticity to the early 1940's setting, some more menacingly than others. This is a film of life on the road as a travelling carny, of dark and stormy nights, of misdirection and deception, of regret and redemption and of murder most foul all wrapped up in a morality tale that transcends the ages. My only gripe is that of the 150 minute running time, del Toro could easily have shaved twenty-minutes off without sacrificing the story or his undeniable artistic integrity. 

'Nightmare Alley' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

WRATH OF MAN : Thursday 6th May 2021.

'WRATH OF MAN' which I saw last week at my local multiplex is an MA15+ Rated American action thriller offering Directed, Co-Produced and Co-Written by Guy Ritchie and is based on the 2004 French film 'Cash Truck' Directed by Nicolas Boukhrief. The lead star of this film is Jason Statham, with whom Ritchie has worked on three previous occasions - 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels', 'Snatch' and 'Revolver' with a fifth collaboration currently in the works on spy thriller 'Five Eyes'. Originally slated for a mid-January release but postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this film was released in Australia last week, one week ahead of its US cinema release and not until 23rd July in the UK. It has so far taken US$8M following its earlier release in Russia, Germany, New Zealand and here in Australia, and has generated mixed or average Reviews so far.

The film opens up with Patrick Hill (Jason Statham) being interviewed for a new job at cash security firm Fortico by the manager Terry (Eddie Marsan) who tells Hill that his references more than check out, and that he has all the necessary credentials to come on board as a new security guard, including a pistol licence. Fortico collects tens of millions of dollars from around Los Angeles every week from hospitality venues, clubs, casinos, banks and businesses and are therefore considered an easy target. So much so that just a matter of weeks ago two of the firms security guards were killed in a heist on one of their trucks. Needles to say Hill is given the job on the spot. He is quickly introduced to his supervisor Bullet (Holt McCallany) who tells him that he will have to undergo four days of intensive training on driving and manoeuvring a cash truck and his shooting skills, and under the latter he needs to score a minimum rating of 70% to pass. After his first day he is introduced to a number of his co-workers. There is Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett), Dana (Niamh Algar) and a number of others who all treat the 'limey' with disrespect and indifference. All of this treatment is like water off a ducks back to 'H', as Hill has come to be known by his new colleagues, who tries to keep himself to himself, mingles when it is called for, and is pretty adept at playing the strong brooding silent type. 

We then fast forward three months and one day Bullet, Sweat Dave and H are out on a cash collection in their truck at the docks off loading only about US$10K from a recently berthed cruise ship. Bullet is on board for what should be a simple and routine pick-up. But something is not right and over the radio comes a garbled message that they are to drive the truck a couple of blocks to rendezvous with a bunch of crims who have Bullet captive, and they want the US$1.5M that is already in the back of the truck. Sweat Dave goes into a blind panic not knowing what to do for the best, while H remains cool, calm and collected and orders Sweat Dave to drive the truck. At the meeting point, Bullet is bundled out of a car and beaten to the ground. What ensues is a fire fight in which H shows off his very particular set of skills as a precise marksman by taking down all six crims singlehandedly, while Sweat Dave and Bullet are left speechless by what they have just witnessed. 

After this show of force, H is hailed a hero by his colleagues and Terry. After the fact he is interviewed by FBI Agents Hubbard and Okey (Josh Cowdery and Jason Wong respectively) wanting to clear up some details and show him video footage of the earlier heist on a Fortico truck which claimed the lives of the two security guards, to determine if there were any similarities in the crims MO. Afterwards, the Agents call their superior officer Agent King (Andy Garcia), who tells them to lay off Hill and let him do what he has to do, and that he will monitor the situation closely.

We then go back in time five months and Hill and his teenage son Dougie (Eli Brown) are about to go out to watch a game, but they are running ahead of time and decide to go get a bite to eat first. Hill's phone rings and it is one of his henchmen, Mike (Darrell D'Silva) who wants him to do a quick surveillance job of the movements of a Fortico truck as its leaves their depot. Hill says it's his day off and he has his son with him, but Mike responds with the fact that there is no one else available and it will only take a few minutes of his time. Reluctantly Hill agrees. Under the pretext of wanting to stop for a burrito from a food truck parked outside the Fortico depot, he orders Dougie to stay in the car with the doors locked. As the cash truck leaves the depot, turns right and heads under an overpass, the trucks route is blocked by construction workers. But these construction workers are not what they seem and they soon produce weapons and the necessary hardware to break into the armoured vehicle and steal the cash money contained therein. In the process the two security guards are both killed and shot, and Dougie is observed to be witnessing all of this and is also shot four times and killed outright. At this Hill rounds the corner and witnesses his son lying dead on the ground, he runs towards him only to be shot three times sending him crashing to the ground as he looks up at the gunman wide eyed but motionless. 

A couple of weeks later Hill comes round in a hospital bed with a doctor standing beside him. The doctor tells him he is lucky to be alive having taken three bullets and lost a quarter of his blood. Hill asks after his son and is told that he died at the scene. Later Hill walks out of hospital and back into his office where Mike, Hollow Bob (Rocci Williams) and Moggi (Babs Olusanmokun) are in attendance saying that they have done everything they can do to locate the perpetrators of Dougie's death, but have drawn a blank. Meanwhile, Hills ex-wife, mourning the death of her son, blames Hill directly for his slaying, leaving him speechless.

After slaying all of the lowlife crims in the neighbourhood who may have had an inkling as to who the perpetrators were responsible for Dougie's death, and having so far still drawn a blank, they hit upon a lead who tells them (under immense duress) who the crims might be. We are then introduced to a bunch of ex-soldiers led by Sergeant Jackson (Jeffrey Donovan) who are all working dead end jobs, as bored as Hell watching TV and drinking beers all day long, and after some excitement in their lives and ideally a big pay cheque. Jackson suggests to his former soldier buddies Jan (Scott Eastwood), Tom (Chris Reilly), Sam (Raul Castillo), Carlos (Laz Alonso) and Brad (Deobia Oparei) a robbery from a wealthy man who Carlos works for but this yields them only a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Jackson later suggests a heist on a cash truck, which eventually leads then to the heist on the Fortico truck in which the two security guards were shot and killed, together with Dougie and in which Hill was collateral damage. 

After successfully pulling off that heist the crims lay low for a couple of month before their next heist. Jackson tells them not to spend up big and just to go about their normal routines so as not to attract any undue attention to themselves. Then comes a major pay day in the form of Black Friday in which Fortico will collect upwards of US$160M in cash. Eight weeks of intense preparation is needed in the lead up to the big day, and all the guys are in, tempted by the excitement of their next 'mission' are the prospect of retirement at the other end. The day duly arrives, and Fortico is as well prepared for every eventuality as it can be. The crims know the high stakes they are playing for and what can go wrong but their planning has been meticulous. Jackson fears only one man in his gang - and that is Jan, the loose cannon, who has attitude, the temperament and the mouth to go with it. Despite being told to lay low he has a furnished warehouse style apartment and a US$28K brand new motorcycle, much to Jackson's chagrin. 

In the truck making their way back to the Fortico depot, Bullet confides in H that he likes him, but that he has a confession to make. Bullet is the man on the inside, feeding intelligence to Jackson and telling him which trucks to hit and when. Bullet is telling H this because he needs his cooperation when they arrive back at the depot to make it look as though all is good to gain access inside. H is surprised and agrees to go along with the plan asking 'what's in it for me' to which Bullet replies with 'your life'. 

Once inside, the other gang members arrive and gain access and needless to say it's not long before a fierce gunfight breaks out as things go awry. H is led into a side room with Terry and Sweat Dave, and has his hands cable tied and is watched over by a pair of the crims wearing full assault gear from head to toe. Meanwhile, all out war is going down outside with Jackson and his remaining crew exchanging rapid gunfire with everyone else working for Fortico. Bullet is making out that he is being held against his will and used as a bargaining tool for the crims to gain access to the main vault. With the shoot out intensifying one of H captors leaves the room to join the fray. This gives H his chance to overpower the remaining one which he does so, ultimately strangling him. In the meantime Terry is on the phone to the S.W.A.T. team who are en route, albeit eight minutes away, and Sweat Dave is dithering about unsure of what to do - fight or flight!

H picks up the automatic weapon from the man he's just killed and goes off in search of the others. He gets into a fist fight with Tom and it doesn't end well for Tom who is killed with a knife to the jugular, while the others get shot up, leaving Bullet to dispense with Dana and a few others. Jan shoots H several times in the chest and leg, leaving hism prone on the ground motionless, but eyes wide open staring at Jan straight in the face. Jackson, Jan and Bullet are the last men standing although Jackson has sustained a bullet injury to the neck and is beginning to look decidedly pale by the time the cash truck crashes out of the depot, pursued by a convoy of Police vehicles. The truck heads down the highway chased closely behind by the Police, a S.W.A.T team and a chopper above. Eventually the truck heads into an underground parking lot, and as the Police vehicles are about to enter Bullet activates the bollards by remote control to come up out of the ground so preventing the Police from gaining access. Unknown to the authorities there is a secret tunnel leading out of the parking lot, that does not appear on any of the schematics as the lot was built in the '50's and the site has since been redeveloped, masking the tunnel from any blue prints. This was Jacksons plan all along. While Jackson is bleeding out Jan and Bullet off load the bags of cash onto two waiting quad bikes that they drive through the tunnel to a parked up Prius at the other end. While Bullet is attending to the stash of cash Jan goes back to the truck and finishes off Jackson by slitting his throat.  

When the pair arrive at the Prius they load up the boot with the money bags. Bullet knows that Jan can't be trusted and so pulls his gun. When Jan returns from opening the gate, he pulls his weapon before Bullet has time to respond, and shoots him through the head without hesitation. Jan successfully makes his getaway with all the money. At his apartment, after stepping out of the shower, he finds a phone ringing in one of the money bags, which was planted there by H to track his location. H had survived and confronts him with Dougie's autopsy report before shooting Jan in the same places Dougie was shot (liver, lungs, spleen and heart), killing him. Agent King is waiting outside to collect the stolen money while H drives off with one of his associates. 

'Wrath of Man' is an enjoyable, well orchestrated piece of action cinema that both Ritchie and Statham are renowned for with set pieces that more than deliver, an ensemble cast of familiar names, and enough shoot 'em up violence and cuss words to please any lover of the genre. With several time shifting storylines, this revenge and retribution offering is often brutal and uncompromising in its depiction of low life criminals and a man on a mission who will stop at nothing to see that his own brand of justice is duly served on those that wronged him. Statham is light on the fast talking quips and one liners trading these in for brooding menacing dialogue that on occasion misses the mark, but is countered by the fast paced action and the actors cold blooded performance. For Ritchie this is not quite up there with his recent 'The Gentlemen', or his earlier works 'Lock, Stock . . . ' and 'Snatch' but it proves his versatility as a film maker of the action crime drama, and as for Statham you know exactly what you're gonna get, but this would be one of his more noteworthy films in recent memory. At a running time of just under two hours, the film feels slightly over extended and perhaps ten or fifteen minutes could have been shaved off, although this would be a minor criticism only.

'Wrath of Man' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard out of a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-