Review: Jason Statham and Guy Ritchie reunite for 'Wrath of Man,' a heist movie with an overflow of testosterone

The gangster heist drama “Wrath of Man” is a reunion of sorts for star Jason Statham and director Guy Ritchie — and it’s been too long since these icons of British machismo mixed it up.

The two got their start together, more than 20 years ago, with the one-two combination of “Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch.” Both were movies where Statham’s bulldog physicality and Ritchie’s penchant for tough-talking dialogue played perfectly against each other, until the one-liners and machine guns were firing almost in sequence.

There’s some of that rat-a-tat, of both the verbal and armor-piercing variety, in “Wrath of Man,” but it’s folded into a frustratingly convoluted timeline and a script that labor too hard to mess with the audience’s head with not enough payoff.

Statham plays Patrick Hill, who’s just applied for a job with an armored truck company, Fortico. The guy training him decides Hill’s new nickname is “H.” The guy, who goes by Bullet (and is played by Holt McCallany, who make the nickname fit), runs H through the paces: Physical tests, target practice in their gun range, and the protocols of moving large supplies of money without getting killed if someone decides to rob the truck.

H passes the tests, and soon is riding along with Bullet and a younger driver, Dave (Josh Hartnett). On the first day, Bullet gets kidnapped by thugs (led, for no adequately explored reason, by the musician Post Malone), who want to exchange the money in the truck for Bullet’s life. H has a different idea, which involve coldly and precisely shooting and killing all the robbers.

Then, just as the other drivers and guards at work are trying to piece together who H is, Ritchie and co-screenwriters Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson (adapting a 2004 French heist film, “Le Convoyeur”) cut ahead and explain it. H, it turns out, is a crime lord whose college-student son Dougie (Eli Brown) was killed during a robbery of one of Fortico’s trucks. H wants revenge, so he takes a job undercover and a list of possible suspects provided by a shadowy FBI boss (Andy Garcia) who knows H’s methods are more effective than the Feds. “Let the painter paint,” Garcia’s character tells some junior G-men investigating how H took down Post Malone’s crew.

Having established two realms — the culture at Fortico, and life in H’s criminal operation — Ritchie throws in another. This one involves another heist crew, all former military who served in the same unit in Afghanistan. How these guys, a team that includes Jeffrey Donovan and Scott Eastwood, fit into the rest of the story would be considered a spoiler.

The dialogue and atmosphere are fueled by testosterone, with insults in the locker room and tough-guy staredowns. The only woman in Fortico, Dana (played by Irish actress Niamh Algar), turns out to be the toughest in the room — which is this movie’s idea of gender equity.

Eventually, the shooting starts, and Ritchie’s talent for staging an energetic gunfight comes through. The action scenes are brutal, but in their own way balletic, the mayhem smartly choreographed to precision. “Wrath of Man” isn’t pretty, but it gets the job done.

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‘Wrath of Man’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, May 7, in theaters where open. Rated R for strong violence throughout, pervasive language and some sexual references. Running time: 118 minutes.