Jason Statham has made this movie several times before. Different title, and usually without the big name supporting cast—Robert De Niro and Clive Owen—but the story of a tough guy who wants to go straight is directly in the actor’s wheelhouse. Either Statham is remarkably consistent or just really enjoys playing guys who can break your neck with his steely gaze. Whatever the case, when you pay your money for Statham flick you know what you’re getting and “Killer Elite” is exactly what you expect it to be.
Based on a true story Statham plays Danny Bryce, an ex- specials ops agent. He’s mad, bad and dangerous to know but trying to cool it on the whole killing people thing. But like Michael Corleone, every time he thinks he’s out they pull him back in. He’s convinced to strap on a gun once again when his mentor and friend Hunter (Robert De Niro) is kidnapped. In return for Hunter’s release Staham agrees to hunt down and murder the assassins of a rich sheik’s sons. He doesn’t count on is a shadow world of government intrigue and a renegade ex-SAS agent (Clive Owen).
Statham movies aren’t about the scripts, which is a good thing because this is a cliché-o-rama from its opening minutes. For example, he’s an ex-mercenary who’s “done with killing” (although it appears that killing is not done with him. He gets called a “crazy S.O.B.”—or some form of that—frequently and is a man who knows when people are lying to him. How does he know? Because their lips are moving. He lives in a world where “everybody knows the rules; there are no rules.”
Every line from the action movie manual is here, along with the prerequisite Statham droplet of romance, the expendable female character who may, or may not become a plot device in the movie’s third act.
It’s predictable as hell. “You gotta be kidding me!” you’ll be tempted to say at some of the plot twists in this movie, if only the characters in the movie didn’t beat you to it first. It’s a cliché-a-thon alright, but because Statham understands his audience and his persona his movies work. His super macho presence is more important than the script. As long as he is in motion, running and leaping, kicking and punching, and giving voice to action movie clichés in his distinctive English grumble his movies work.
Jason Statham isn’t so much an actor as he is a brand. When you go to McDonald’s you know you can expect the two all beef patties, special sauce and the sesame seed bun to taste the same whether you’re in Toronto or Hong Kong. It’s that kind of brand management that has made Statham a star. You know what to expect from his movies—rippling abs, some high kicking action, his trademarked facial stubble and loads of explosions. It’s a simple formula but one that works for his fans. Perhaps the advertising slogan for his new film, “The Mechanic,” should be “New, But Not Improved.”
This time around Statham plays Arthur Bishop, a highly trained and highly dangerous hit man. “Pulling a trigger is easy,” he says in his distinctive rumble, “the best jobs are the ones where no one even knows you where there.” Like the character he plays in “The Transporter” movies, he’s detached, precise and no nonsense. When his mentor and friend Harry (Donald Sutherland) is killed Arthur turns mentor for Harry’s troubled son (Ben Foster), teaching him his deadly trade.
What Statham lacks in range he makes up for in muscle tone. His well crafted on-screen persona is equal parts stoic masculinity and lithe athletic ability. He’s Charles Bronson (who starred in the original “The Mechanic” in 1972) with better moves, a man of action and few words in the mold of Clint Eastwood, if Clint had a better roundhouse kick. In “The Mechanic,” his 27th film since 1998 (and he has at least five more in the pipeline), he doesn’t do anything we haven’t seen him do before, but no matter, he simply does the things we expect him to do. That’s what brands do, and as movie brands go these days he’s about as reliable as it gets.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s brand, for example, tries to tread similar ground, but every now and again veers off course with a kid’s flick or comedy, but not Statham. “The Mechanic” and his other films are so true to brand they’re almost interchangeable. Only the character names, and, occasionally the facial expressions, change.
Is “The Mechanic” a good movie? If you liked “The Transporter,” then yes, you’ll like “The Mechanic.” If not, then perhaps the Statham brand is not for you.
“The Expendables,” the new film starring every action star known to man, including Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham and Arnold Schwarzenegger (and that’s just the Ss!), is a nostalgia fest celebrating those cinematic days of yore when gangs of mercenaries led by action heroes like Dolph Lundgren could bring down governments and spread the American way of life armed only with an arsenal of guns, knives, grenades and one liners. That the heyday of this kind of movie, and most of the actors in it, was twenty-five years ago is not going to prevent “The Expendables” from kicking butt and lots of it.
In this blood and testosterone splattered story Stallone leads a group of freelance soldiers—knife tosser Lee Christmas (Jason Statham) hand-to-hand expert Ying Yang (Jet Li), sniper Gunner (Dolph Lundgren), big gun toter Terry Crews and MMA superstar Randy Couture—whose motto is “if the money’s right we don’t care where the job is.” When they take a job to bring down a dictator (David Zayas who plays Angel on “Dexter”) and American drug lord (Eric Roberts, whose sister Julia has a very different kind of movie opening on the same day as this one) on the South American Isle of Vilena, however, they may have finally found one hotspot worse than Bosnia, Sierra Leone and all the other hellish places they’ve fought for pay, combined. The only thing than can get them to go back there is—you guessed it—a woman. Cue the explosions.
Not that there aren’t some retina scorching action scenes. Stallone (who also directed) uses each of the individual talents of his actors well—it’s always a pleasure to see Jet Li in action—and several things blow up real good, but when the movie tries to go deep it stumbles. When Mickey Rourke, who plays Tool, a former soldier of fortune who now sets up their engagements—think Charlie on “Charlie’s Angels”—drones on about trying to “save what was left of my soul” it grinds the movie to a near halt.
Parker is a complex character. As the subject of a couple of dozen novels by Donald E. Westlake, he’s a hardboiled thief with a code of criminal ethics that involves doing the right thing, even if it means killing and maiming people.
“Parker” the movie, is Jason Statham film about a hardboiled robber named Parker who is unafraid to kill and maim to get want he wants. Missing is the complexity of character.
After a daring robbery goes bad Parker (Statham) is double-crossed and left for dead. But because the movie is called “Parker,” he doesn’t succumb to the gunshot wounds. Instead he vows to put things right between him and the gang who cheated him out of his $200,000 split of the loot. If you make a deal both sides have to honor it otherwise there’s chaos, he says, “and I won’t let chaos take over my life.”
Except that things get chaotic when he hatches an elaborate plan to get vengeance and his money.
The most shocking thing about “Parker” is that Jason Statham has hair in the opening scene. His usually close cropped do is hidden under a wig that makes him look a bit like George Clooney’s English brother. Other than that this is as by-the-book as it gets.
Statham is playing a variation on his Statham Character #1 in which he plays “loner with a past who must protect a loved one” (as opposed to Statham Character #2 which is the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.”) The loved one in this case is money, although there are a number of other characters that could easily have taken the place of the greenbacks.
There’s Parker’s girlfriend (Emma Booth), who looks more like his daughter and Nick Nolte, who rasps his way through an extended cameo as Parker’s business partner. If an Emery board could speak it would sound like the rasp Nolte’s vocal chords produce these days. Neither of these characters is given much to do except parade around naked (her, not him) and fill time until the final caper.
More prominent is Leslie (Jennifer Lopez), a struggling real estate agent who as the pseudo-love interest and almost co-conspirator doesn’t have much to do except deliver lines like, “You don’t have to check me for a wire again do you? You can if you want.”
She’s someone who has bought into the America Dream—Lamborghinis, designer clothes—but can’t afford any of it and she’s bitter. Bitter enough to embrace a life of crime.
Whether she’ll be rewarded and whether Parker’s plot pays off is where the movie treads in murky moral territory. For as often as he says things like, “Civilized people need to follow rules—I need to put things right,” the moral here seems to be that two wrongs do make a right.
Bad + bad = good.
The movie is so intent on selling the idea that the vengeful killer is really a good guy that a character at the end actually wonders if he is some kind of angel.
“Parker” is a Jason Statham movie, with all that implies. The good is a brooding physicality he brings to his roles. He looks like he could snap your neck with his steely glare, so when he does it on screen, it works. Trouble is, the mentality behind the muscles to sell a character who lives by his own morally ambiguous rules is simply missing.
Here’s my idea for a marketing plan for the new action film “Safe”:
Body Count: 350
Bullet Budget: $1,000,000
Jason Statham’s Steely Glare: Priceless
In “Safe,” the gravelly-voiced Statham digs deep into his bag of tricks to play Luke Wright, Statham Character #2. That’s the “loner with a past who must protect a youthful innocent.” (As opposed to Statham Character #1 in which he plays “loner with a past who must protect a loved one.”) The innocent in this case is an eleven-year-old prodigy named Mei (Catherine Chan) who has been kidnapped by a Chinese Triad boss (James Hong) who hopes to use her photographic memory to store sensitive information. Of course this makes her valuable to the Russian mob, who try and snatch her away to unlock the secrets in her pretty little head. Enter Luke, a coiled spring of a man who has nothing to live for until he meets the girl genius.
The first half hour of “Safe” consists of choppy set-up—plot, character exposition and backstory. It’s clunky and strangely Statham-less. Then at the thirty-minute mark Statham comes to life—he may be down-on-his-luck, but you know the body count is about to go way up. All of a sudden he becomes a one-liner-spouting action hero and “Safe” becomes the dumb good fun we expect from Statham’s movies.
There’s lots of good old fashioned fist fights, some awesome cheeseball backstory info delivered with gusto by Chris Sarandon and corrupt cops. Unfortunately there’s also young Mei. It cannot be a coincidence that Mei’s character name is only one letter away from the word meh. She delivers one of the worst child mastermind performances in recent years.
Luckily she’s playing opposite Statham who covers the screen with his own brand of awesome.
“Safe” isn’t for everyone, but Statham fans will find something to like.
The Transporter series, now on its third outing, is never going to be confused with Shakespeare. The movies, which star Jason Statham as the charismatic but deadly chauffeur for hire Frank Martin, are not about plot, or dialogue or character development. Nope, they’re about ninety minutes of non-stop crazy action geared toward men who want to see Statham bust heads in inventive ways and women who want to see Statham bust heads in inventive ways while shirtless.
In the new film Martin (Statham) is coerced into driving Valentina (Natalya Rudakova), the daughter of a high ranking Ukrainian government official from Marseilles to Bucharest and then onwards to Odessa on the Black Sea. His mission is complicated by high tech wristbands both he and his “package” are forced to wear which will blow up if they stray more than seventy-five feet from the car and hired thugs brought in to retrieve Valentina. Worse still may be Valentina herself, who presents a problem Martin has never had to deal with before.
Transporter 3 is to its franchise what Godfather III was to Coppola’s mafia series. It looks like the first couple of original movies, has some of the same actors and a recognizable story but something is off. In Transporter 3 the story is thrown out of whack by the addition of too much dialogue. These movies have traditionally had a low dialogue to action ratio and when that quotient is thrown out of balance the audience suffers. Usually I’m all for more story, but there isn’t any more story here than usual, just really bad dialogue that seems like bridges to the action sequences and nothing more.
Statham is best when he’s in motion and when he is kicking-butt the movie flies along. The action scenes are wild, there just aren’t enough of them. The excellently named director Olivier Megaton tries to work in some more personal stuff into the script, but that’s not what the Transporter movies or the character Frank Martin are about. Fans of the series want their eyes to dance; leave character development for Meryl Streep. The character of Martin has rules—never get personally involved, don’t ask questions—not personality. He should be left to do what he does best—drive and fight—and forget all the other stuff.
Loosely based on the Roger Corman trash cinema classic of almost the same name Death Race is set in the very near future in a time when the US penal system is filled to busting. The operation of jails has been handed over to the Weyland Corporation who devise a unique way to solve over crowding. They create a television spectacle that’ll bring in huge ratings pitting the most violent thugs against one another for fun and profit in a to-the-death cross country car rally. Called “the ultimate in auto carnage” the Death Race is broadcast on the internet to an audience in he tens of millions.
At the center of the action is The Transporter star Jason Statham as Jensen Ames a three-time racing champion who’s mad, bad and dangerous to know. An ex-con, he is framed for a crime he didn’t commit and forced to race or face years of confinement in America’s most notorious penitentiary Terminal Island.
The premise, I imagine, was meant to be a satire, commenting on the length that evil corporations will go to make money and the debasement of a culture that would tune into this auto butchery but instead we’re handed a fast paced, but brainless action flick with all the depth of a Mötley Crüe music video. The campy fun of the original is gone, replaced by mindless violence, slow motion explosions and souped up-not-so-funny cars complete with machine guns and napalm.
The action and violence are pumped up to ridiculous levels, framed by characters that do little but grunt and flex their prodigious muscles. But what do you expect from a movie called Death Race? It doesn’t have the same high octane excitement of some of star Jason Statham’s other films—most notably Crank—but director Paul W.S. Anderson (not to be confused with Paul Anderson, helmer of Magnolia and Punch Drunk Love) gives the audience everything they want—action, blood and guts—and nothing that will make them squirm in their seats—story or well rounded characters. He has calibrated this movie to appeal to people who would pay money to go see a movie named Death Race. All others beware.
In 1969 an R&B singer named Edwin Starr had a hit song that I thought it might be appropriate to quote here. “War! What is it good for?” he sang, “Absolutely nothin’! Say it again.” Starr may have had a loftier message in mind than a review for a Jet Li / Jason Statham movie, but if the shoe fits.
War, is the story of an FBI agent (Statham) determined to avenge the death of his partner by bringing down both the Yakuza and Triad crime organizations in San Francisco. The key to cracking the case is Rogue (Jet Li) a hit man for hire who appears to be playing both sides of the fence.
This should have been big dumb fun; the kind of movie that starts with a punch to the head and pummels away at you for ninety action-packed minutes, but instead War limps along for most of its running time. It doesn’t have half the manic energy of Statham’s last film Crank, or nearly enough of the acrobatic physicality that Li is famous for.
Then there is the story. Any movie about double crosses and Machiavellian dealings between crime groups has to be careful to be clear about who’s crossing who or the script can turn to mush. War, with its twists and double and triple crosses, is so confused you need a slide rule to keep up on what’s going on.
War is stylishly filmed by former video director Philip G. Atwell, and is filled with cool cars, beautiful women and just enough action to whet your appetite. It has all the trappings of a solid b action flick, but without the extra spark needed to push it over the top into Funland.
The experience of watching Crank is like watching any action movie on DVD… on fast forward. This movie zips along at such a clip that it should be subtitled, “A Presentation of Short Attention Span Productions.”
Jason Stathan plays a hit man who has been injected with a drug that will kill him within an hour if his heart rate dips below a certain point. Too stubborn to die, he drinks Red Bull by the gallon and uses adrenaline to keep him self alive, while he does what anyone who just has one hour live would do—get revenge on the guy who injected him with poison.
It’s a wild ride with more action than any other three movies this summer. It movies so quickly that if you don’t like a certain stunt, stick around for about thirty seconds because there will be three more you might like better. Crank mixes Statham’s considerable skuzzy charm with outrageous action, great visuals, lots of dark humor and a winning performance from Amy Smart as the hit man’s stoner girlfriend.
