Jason Statham takes on an army of bank rob­bers in the Wrath of Man

Though he’s now well on the oth­er side of 50 years old, the cue-balled killing machine known as Jason Statham has shown no signs of slow­ing down, con­tin­u­ing to crank out enjoy­able B‑movie action at a swift clip. His lat­est entry along those lines will be Wrath of Man, a reunion with reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Guy Ritchie that casts the star as the two kinds of men he plays best: a man on a mis­sion, and a man with a secret.

Today brings the first trail­er for the upcom­ing thriller, bristling with so many gun-reload­ing clicks that the sound starts to resem­ble rhyth­mic music. In it, sharp­shoot­ing Statham takes aim at crew after crew of bank rob­bers in his employ as part of a pro­tec­tion squad for armored trucks trans­port­ing huge sums of money.

But this enig­mat­ic ​‘H’ car­ries with him a dark secret that the clip below reveals after about a minute’s time: this man has set out on the warpath in search of the bas­tard who mur­dered his son all those years ago, a clas­sic set­up for no-holds-barred ass-kick­ing since the days of Death Wish. With each job, and each stick­up team bust­ed, he gets one step clos­er to bring­ing the killer to jus­tice (of the bloody street vari­ety, presumably).

While Ritchie’s last film The Gen­tle­men may have drawn mixed reviews – includ­ing from this pub­li­ca­tion: we deemed it ​“out of touch and out of time” – at least it’s pos­i­tive to see him stick­ing to orig­i­nal con­cepts, as opposed to the flat fran­chise work that seemed to grind out much of his cre­ative sen­si­bil­i­ty. The man’s most com­fort­able with hard-nosed, be-stub­bled crooks, and this project should sup­ply him with plenty.

As for Ritchie and Statham, they’re already hard at work on their next film togeth­er, a cur­rent­ly film­ing pro­duc­tion called Five Eyes that will pair him with Aubrey Plaza as an MI6 and CIA agent join­ing forces. Firearms, glo­be­trot­ting loca­tion shoot­ing, odds-on gri­mac­ing? It’s got all the mak­ings of anoth­er gem in the Statham filmography.