Twenty-three years ago, Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels introduced Jason Statham to the world and, two years later, Snatch firmly established him as an intriguing actor who could shoulder the weight of crime thrillers on his broad shoulders. They teamed up again for 2005’s Revolver, which was met with some indifference and marked their last collaboration. All this to say, it’s been 16 years since Ritchie and Statham have filmed together and after the middling reviews of Revolver, it seems they have something to prove. And that something is Wrath of Man, a remake of the 2004 French thriller Cash Truck that is a much more dour yet exciting thriller than I expected.

Right away, Ritchie’s eye for establishing shots is front and center as Wrath of Man opens on a pair of Fordico security guards about to transport a huge amount of money in their armored van. This entire sequence stages the camera in the back of the van and watches the two load the money and begin their drive, chit chatting about small talk. A concrete mixer rolls up in front of them, bringing them to a stop as construction workers, armed with guns, surround the van and being soldering their way in. This entire heist sequence is shot from the vantage point of the stationary camera in the back of the van, which captures the ensuing violence with an almost apathetic and casual eye. It also obscures the death of the two guards, relying instead on audio cues and the radio chatter that situates the situation as almost a heist-gone-wrong.

This opening sequence is thrilling because of what it doesn’t show and showcases Ritchie and his cinematographer (DP Alan Stewart) as a team that has nothing to prove. Instead of outright action, it relies on the chaos of the sound design and the score by Christopher Benstead to set the pacing and add percussive beats to the sequence. Benstead’s score mixes industrial percussive synths punctuated with bursts of symphonic cues. Most interestingly, a low rumbling sound roars through the score; a mix that brought to mind a loud muffler revving, a roaring engine or a growl of a tiger. It’s animalistic and feels dangerous.

This brisk introduction is then followed by the aftermath as the narrative picks up a bit later with Fordico’s new hire Patrick Hill (Jason Statham), nicknamed H by his new, similarly nicknamed, boss Bullet (Holt McCallany). It’s H’s first day on the job and before he can become a guard on Fordico’s cash truck routes, he has to go through eight hours of training, which he barely passes. As we follow his first day, we’re introduced to his coworkers, including Boy Sweat Dave (Josh Hartnett), Hollow Bob (Rocci Williams) and the lone woman cash truck driver Dana (Niamh Algar).

Yes, with the exception of two under-developed female side characters and H’s ex-wife (who shows up in one scene to browbeat him), Wrath of Man is another decidedly hyper-masculine movie from Ritchie.

On H’s first day on the job, his cash truck is hit, Bullet gets taken hostage, tough boy Dave freaks out and H displays talents far beyond the 70% score he received during his training as he expertly dispatches each of the robbers with ruthless efficiency. In the aftermath, his superiors don’t quite know how to take his violent bravado. Fordico boss Blake Halls (Rob Delaney) loves his style, but Bullet thinks there’s something off about him. Things aren’t adding up. It’s here that another Guy Ritchie staple comes into play, as he then takes the narrative back five months and begins unpacking everything we’ve seen up to this point. The rest of the story unfolds non-linearly as the screenplay by Guy Ritchie, Man Davies and Ivan Atkinson explores H’s mysterious past and follows not only him, but a group of robbers somehow connected to Fordico’s recent spate of troubles.

It’s nice when a movie you aren’t expecting to be good is actually quite excellent. The one-two punch of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch hit at a time when I was discovering non-linear films with ensemble casts, but I mostly lost track of Ritchie’s career afterwards. Wrath of Man goes back to the same well that fueled those two films and should satisfy fans of Ritchie’s early work. What was impressive, though, was how restrained Wrath of Man actually is. From the opening shots to Statham’s rather bleak performance, Ritchie crafts a film whose tension slowly twists the knife. Outside of the eye-rolling locker room banter (the dialogue throughout isn’t fantastic), there is nary a witty retort in the film. Statham’s H isn’t the quippy protagonist he’s made a recent career of; he’s a haunted man who seems ill at ease with his coworkers’ random homophobia and tough guy attitudes.

The film, likewise, isn’t the action-packed over-the-top thriller I expected. Sure, it’s punctuated by a couple moments of hard-hitting violence, but this isn’t the Michael Bay actioner the trailer led me to believe. Instead, it’s a somewhat introspective exploration of revenge that introduces its large and disparate ensemble cast slowly throughout the first hour or so of the film. As each character is introduced, it’s almost as if they’re placed in the action as if they’re chess pieces, moving along a board and put directly into tragedy’s line of fire.

It’s a surprisingly subdued film and as it doubles back to briefly explore H’s life and the events that led him to be Fordico’s gunslinger, it embraces a certain melancholy. The non-linear structure takes what’s actually a simple revenge story we’ve seen so many times in crime thrillers and makes it intriguing to watch. Much like the surprises baked into the structure of Ritchie’s earlier films, Wrath of Man delights in its narrative reveals, as small details suddenly become meaningful. Sure, devotees of his work will probably see where the twists and turns are going, but a surprise revelation actually made me gasp audibly.

The restraint pays off by the time the film moves into its end game, bringing all of the seemingly disparate threads together in one giant shootout. Here, the tension that was built up over the course of 80 minutes suddenly releases in a spray of violence, captured by Ritchie’s assured direction and Stewart’s sleek camerawork. The last forty minutes lets loose like a wire that’s continually wound up to the point of snapping. Even the cut-aways of the pre-planning, a trope used to the point of cliche in heist films, actually steadies the action and provides another wrinkle of non-linear fatalism to the finale.

While Wrath of Man reaches back into Guy Ritchie’s bag of crime thriller tropes, it somehow still manages to surprise with its fatalistic use of non-linear storytelling. Ultimately a simplistic story of revenge that doesn’t confront its bloody message, it’s engrossing from beginning to end and reminded me of the Ritchie/Statham combination I loved in college. It feels like a return to form as it goes back to the well that established both of their careers, but it also comes across as so assured in tone and execution that it comes together as a culmination of their careers so far.