5 money lessons from “Wrath of Man.”

Sometimes I want to watch art films, international cinema or documentaries. And sometimes I just want to see a whole lotta stuff get blowed up real good. “Wrath of Man,” a heist film starring Jason Statham, did not disappoint even though at times it was hard to follow.

Mostly that was due to the flashbacks. Lots of flashbacks. A couple of other scenes were absolutely mystifying until later, when they finally begin to make sense. Patience is needed, along with a tolerance for gunfire and roaring engines.

Now and then the story is a bit mystifying, as when H (Statham) gives a sub-par performance at a shooting range and isn’t the best at parking a truck. Another character basically confesses to being a bad guy, at which point I whispered to my great-nephew, “Why in the world would he tell him that?”

“Because he doesn’t want him to die,” great-nephew whispered back.

Again, it all made sense eventually. And the whispering was okay: We were two of only five people in the theater, and the only ones in our section. Besides, there was all that gunfire and roaring engines to provide cover.

How did I find personal finance lessons in all this? The way I always do: by looking for them. Here’s what I found. 

 

1. Develop connections.

We find H talking with a guy who’s clearly in law enforcement, and a young woman who’s either a master forger or also in law enforcement. They help him out, even though no money seems to change hands. Maybe they owe him, or possibly he plans to owe them. Either way, he gets what he needs.

As could you, if you play your cards right. That doesn’t mean relying on family contacts to get a cushy job that you might not deserve. What it does mean is stuff like:

• Developing contacts in your line of work – join a group, attend a conference, etc.
• Giving as well as getting – don’t be the guy who always asks for favors but never returns any
• Paying attention to what’s going on locally; for example, hearing about a new café opening nearby could mean a new market for your macarons

Ultimately you’ll need to rise on your own merit. But contacts, and what you can learn from them, can make it easier to get noticed.

2. Beware of sunk-cost fallacy.

Those connections didn’t fix everything, i.e., he couldn’t find out everything he needed to know. Rather than keep looking for what doesn’t seem findable, H decides to listen to an associate who suggests an Occam’s Razor-sharp tactic on how to flush out the bad guys.

The sunk-cost fallacy also applies to your money. If you’re looking for a reason to hang on to a job that hasn’t kept pace with inflation, stay in an apartment after rent increases, or keep a side gig or investment that’s not actually earning enough to be worth it, remember that you’re allowed to change things up. Just because you’ve always done something a certain way doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it that way – especially when it means throwing good money after bad.

3. Embrace technology, but set limits.

The armored-truck business is rife with cameras, computers and other high-tech security measures. (Also lots of guns. Lots of them.) Most of the time it works. But the higher-ups are so complacent about their setup that they get a little bit sloppy.

Then again, the bad guys aren’t much better: One of them gets tracked by having a smartphone slipped into his bag. When its ringtone (“The Ride of the Valkyries”) starts to play, well, whoops: Now someone knows where he is, which means he’ll soon be paid a visit.

Smartphones have become a necessity in many industries, which can be a blessing if it helps you keep a job and a curse if it makes you findable 24/7. For example, I have sent notes to PR specialists in late evening, expecting to hear back the next day, only to have them write back immediately. Yikes. No work-life balance there.

Oh, and be sure to guard your info. At one point we see H eyeballing a rack of employee badges. Now he knows everyone’s name, and he can check them out. If you put too much personal information out into the world, don’t be surprised if you get hacked or have your identity stolen. No one needs to know your full name or your date of birth, or the name of your dog, or to be able to figure out where you live based on selfies. And no one cares what you had for lunch.

4. Low-tech can also work.

A bad guy builds a diorama to show how a heist will go down. The crew learns the step-by-step precision they’ll need to maintain; for example, they’ll have no more than five minutes before the SWAT teams are deployed, so those moneybags need to be filled up quickly. You’ve probably already guessed that things don’t go exactly the way they were planned.

Obviously that happens in the real world, too. Power failures, bad weather, supply-chain issues and, of course, pandemics can really put a hurt on the best-laid plans. So we do what we can with what we have.

After the tornado, we charge smartphones in the car to check on family/friends and to look for services. Post-flood, we find as much ice as possible to keep food from spoiling. During the winter power outage, we set up tents in the living room and everyone piles in with sleeping bags.

Some years back a big windstorm took down lots of trees in Anchorage. After a couple of days it was clear the power wasn’t coming back on; I wasn’t living here then, but I believe it took almost a week to come back. So DF took the meat and fish out of the freezer and pressure-canned it on the gas stove. He also unearthed a French press to substitute for his electric coffee machine, to be sure of at least one cup a day.

Such things aren’t always fun, but they’re necessary. And they’re loads cheaper than decamping to a hotel (assuming any rooms are still available). Bonus: Nobody loots your home because you’re in it, and the kids might learn to play cribbage.

5. Never forget Murphy’s Law.

As we see shots of the team leader moving toy trucks around that diorama and explaining how it will go down, we also get the real-life counterparts roaring along streets and bad guys firing off a lot of bullets. And that’s when we see that the team leader couldn’t account for every potential misstep. There’s always a wild card to be played, right?

The same is true of your daily life. You think you’ve got it all figured out: decent job, a place to live, a plan for retirement and then that wild card comes out of the deck. Your partner gets laid off. You planned to work until the eighth month of pregnancy but instead are put on bed rest in month three. A pandemic happens, destroying your hard-built business.

All we can do is hope for the best, plan for the worst and not be surprised by anything in between. Having a Plan B, a Plan C and maybe a Plan Z is a good idea. So is a financial fire drill.

Related reading:

• 7 money lessons from “A Quiet Place”
• 8 personal finance lessons from “Gotterdammerung”
• 5 money lessons from “Jumanji: Welcome to the jungle”
• 5 financial lessons from “Parsifal”