Money Movers vs Le Convoyeur vs Wrath of Man
Three movies about inside jobs at a cash truck company. Each culminates in a violent showdown.
Which one did it better?
Money Movers is actually based on a true story in Australia. It was released in 1978, but don't let the date fool you into thinking this is a hokey story. It's an extremely violent film with some great action set pieces and an intense finale. The film has a quick runtime and focuses more on the inside-job aspects, the cat-and-mouse antics of the company trying to track down the insider, and the way the heisters plan to pull off the job. It's a pretty intense film that tracks multiple points of view leading up to the big showdown.
Le Convoyeur is thoroughly French. A 2004 flick that's kind of pretentious (as most French films are) and is more of a character-thriller that follows a man infiltrating a cash truck company to find out more about violent cash truck robberies that resulted in personal tragedy. The whole inside-man aspect is kind of forgotten about for a large portion of the film and doesn't really make itself known until near the end. Has a great final showdown, fairly bloody and quite violent. Ironically the squib work isn't quite as gory or bloody as Money Movers, but it's definitely bloodier than Wrath of Man.
Wrath of Man basically takes the concepts of both films and smooshes them together with its own twist. The dual narrative works well to separate it from the other two films, and it's nowhere near as pretentious as Le Convoyeur. An argument can be made about whether it's more of less tense than Money Movers due to how many moving parts are involved with both films when it comes to the heists. I might give the edge to Wrath of Man just because of the ludicrous amount of logistics involved due to it being more modern. As far as the action is concerned, the shootouts are longer but far less realistic than Money Movers and weirdly less gory than Le Convoyeur.
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I liked all three films for different reasons. I think if Wrath of Man's final shootout was a little more grounded like Money Movers it would be the clear victor of the three. Better squibbing like in Le Convoyeur would also have put it a league above the others. The dual-narrative definitely makes it the more ambitious of the three films, but it can also be difficult to grasp the "Whys?" and "Hows?" unless you thoroughly pay attention to some of the minutiae.
I think Money Movers maintains the best pace out of the three films, and stays intense basically from start to finish, avoiding any filler and only fleshing out characters insofar as was necessary for their involvement with the final outcome of the film. Le Convoyeur didn't really explain a lot and left a lot up to the viewer to decipher. The "inside job" aspect wasn't even explained at all, and the villains were complete throwaways. The intensity was mostly in not knowing how things would unfold and the complete ruthlessness of the villains.
So which one did you prefer of the three cargo-van-heist films?