★★☆☆☆
The erratic, infuriating career of Guy Ritchie, the English director, continues apace with this hotchpotch revenge thriller starring Jason Statham, the talismanic hero of the Ritchie’s films Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
A genuinely bravura opening sequence, set within an armoured vehicle mid-robbery, promises great things.
And even when Statham is introduced as a hardman security driver called “H” (“He’s H, like the bomb!” a cowed observer says), the the setting — a busy security firm in Los Angeles — is credible and appealing.
But then, alas, a flashback reveals a gross crime against H and his family, and so begins a leaden, blood-spattered and painfully predictable trudge towards an anticlimax that is as joyless as it is expected.
The only deviation from formula — and from the French thriller, Cash Truck, on which this is based — is a narrative non-sequitur in the middle, during which H decides to execute a bunch of dark-web pornographers. Naturally.
15, 119min
On Amazon Prime Video
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