WHEN H shows up for work in Guy Ritchie’s “Wrath of Man,” no one at Fortico Security has much reason to suspect he might have any motive other than protecting the cash for the armored-truck outfit. The new guy — who looks an awful lot like the bald bloke from the “Crank” and “Transporter” movies — doesn’t waste words. His backstory checks out, as do his references. He’s a decent shot, but not so good that it would attract attention. Just another guard on an experienced team that recently lost two of its own in a bloody heist. His first day on the job, however, some jokers try to rob H’s truck, and he can’t help showing them he means business. What could have been a US$2.5 million robbery winds up with his co-workers safe, the money secure and half a dozen would-be crooks dead. Not just dead, but plugged so precisely, it’s hard to ignore that H must be some kind of professional — and a hell of a better marksman than his employers took him for. Ticket buyers will be considerably less surprised than the instant hero’s Fortico colleagues to learn that H has an agenda. That’s because H is played by Jason Statham, reuniting with Ritchie more than two decades after “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” launched both of their blockbuster movie careers, and it’s not for nothing that these two decided to team up again. As the pair’s crime-movie collaborations go, this latest project isn’t nearly so flashy as career-high “Snatch” or the whirling, rococo mess that was “Revolver.” While Statham plays off the stoical tough-guy persona he’s developed in the interim, Ritchie settles into the tense but relatively restrained mode of Christopher Nolan — specifically, “The Dark Knight,” easily the most influential action movie since “The Matrix.” Ritchie’s own RocknRolla-coaster style has plenty of imitators, but here, it’s refreshing to see him calm down and deliver something that’s intricate without being addled. The production adopts an elegant, almost monochromatic color palette, while composer Christopher Benstead’s undeniably Zimmer-esque double-bassy score steadily saws away at our nerves, keeping audiences just this side of a heart attack for the better part of two hours. Like the H character, “Wrath of Man” walks into the room confident and secure in its abilities, professional, efficient and potentially lethal. All of this is best experienced in a movie theater, if possible. Though Ritchie and “The Gentlemen” co-writers Marn Davies and Ivan Atkinson have taken considerable liberties along the way, “Wrath of Man” serves as a remake of/improvement upon Nicolas Boukhrief’s 2008 “Cash Truck” (“Le Convoyeur”), a tight 95-minute thriller little seen outside its native France. The setup is the same, though best left vague, considering the fun that comes in speculating as to H’s motives during the new film’s mysterious first hour: Is he a government agent? A criminal mastermind? Is he planning a heist of his own? Or did he join Fortico to thwart the next one? Ritchie will show the heist two more times: first from H’s perspective (as it happens, he’s casing the Fortico headquarters when it occurs), then again from that of the squad that planned it — or more specifically, through the one good eye of the face-scarred renegade member (Scott Eastwood) who did all of the shooting. By this time, it’s more than clear how H relates to everything, as well as what his end goal is, which is more than can be said for the French film that opted for a more elliptical version of the same crime. H wants revenge. And from the looks of it, he has nothing to lose, which makes him even more dangerous than what the character’s backstory would suggest. The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen. (SD-Agencies) | 