I Am Wrath (2016)
4/10
Death Wish MCMXCVII
16 October 2016
Yes here it is folks another in a long line of 'Death Wish' clones and one which quite frankly isn't much cop...

The story here sees Stanley Hill (John Travolta) hunting down the crew that killed his wife. Rather than being a one-man show Stanley gains assistance from his fellow ex-black ops pal Dennis (Christopher Meloni). In atypical fashion, Stanley and Dennis take out these punks one by one until they ultimately learn who is behind the death of Stanley's wife and why she was assassinated....

I really haven't got a problem with vigilante type films and have enjoyed other clones that have followed Death Wish (such as Death Sentence which I thought was excellent). For me, part of the problem with this film lay with its lead actor... Travolta has been excellent in the past and was great in films such as Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty and Face/Off, but something just wasn't right here. His performance here was wooden, stiff and generally uncomfortable to watch - it's hard to explain but I just never found him convincing at any point during the story. Many of the supporting performers don't fare much better and to be honest the only person who I thought made any kind of impact was Luis Da Silva Jr who was actually very good and he looked kind of menacing as well.

Of course, a weak and generic story doesn't always matters in films such as I am Wrath as long as it has some style and intensity, but the film falls flat in these respects too - there's no real imagination here, there is some style here (although I personally feel the John Woo style slow-mo stuff looks a bit lame now). You know that our 2 ex-black ops guys are going to kick everyone's ass and fight their way out of impossible situations so you're never going to fear for them. This all results in a film that passes the time, but that's all it does. I watched it, but the only feeling I had about it when the credits started rolling was indifference.

I Am Wrath isn't completely terrible, but it's the sort of film that's so generic and so safe you'll likely be predicting what's going to happen 5 minutes before it does. Like I said a generic story isn't a bad thing if you're made to care about what happens, but I just never got that feeling at any point during this film.
28 out of 46 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed