So I’ve just watched the Stathamest movie that Jason Statham has ever Stathamed.
Safe
This is not a movie that will make you be a better person. This is not a movie that will have you sit back and think “I think that I will do the following things…”. Heck, It’s not a movie that will have you sit back and think much, much of anything *AT ALL*. It’s not even a movie that *CAN* be spoiled. I mean, we all know about spoiler theory, right? This movie is spoiler-proof.
If I told you “Statham jumps out of a window on the second floor and uses a bad guy as a cushion”, you’d say “I saw that in the trailer.”
There’s nothing I can tell you about this movie that will lessen your enjoyment of it. Indeed, if I told you every plot point of the movie (something I’m fixing to do), it’ll get you to purse your lips and say “huh, maybe I *SHOULD* see that movie.”
So, like, Jasan Statham is this bad assed guy who is an MMA fighter who puts the guy he’s fighting in a coma and, for reasons involving the Russian Mafia, intends to go off the grid. Well, Mei is this little girl who does work for the Chinese mafia and she’s told to memorize a series of numbers.
Together they fight crime.
If the movie reminded me of anything, it reminded me of Jet Li’s Unleashed… remember? That’s the movie that said “Morgan Freeman as a father figure just isn’t sympathetic enough… LET’S MAKE HIS FATHER FIGURE BE A *BLIND* MORGAN FREEMAN!!!!!! So, for this one, If you want to see Jason Statham punch people in the face and/or chest before he shoots them in the face and/or chest, I may have a dozen recommendations. If, however, you want to see him be a father figure to a young Chinese girl before he goes and punches people in the face and/or chest before shooting them in the face and/or chest? DO I HAVE A MOVIE FOR YOU!!!
You’ve seen this movie before. There is nothing novel to be seen here… but Jason Statham has this romantic thing when it comes to which script he chooses that makes pretty much anything you see him in something that makes you pleased when you realize how many movies he’s stolen from rather than irritated. That trait comes in doubly as handy given that this is not one of those movies that makes you think but, instead, is one of those movies that makes you dumber.
So… I guess that’d be my recommendation this week, if I remembered how to spell “recommendation”.
(Dude, there was this one scene where just shooting the guy once would have sufficed? But instead he emptied his clip. It was awesome.)
I’m on my way to Redbox now! (OK, tomorrow maybe.)
I have a list of movies that will make you think and make you meditate on life and some of the movies on the list might even make you be a better person.
Seriously:
THIS MOVIE IS NOT ON THAT LIST.
That said, if you are down with the whole “dumb action movie” thing? I think that this is Statham figuring out the difference between Commando and Raw Deal . Proverbially.
But instead he emptied his clip.
This is unusual?
There are normally a kabillion guys and he has to use something approaching stewardship.
(He even runs out of bullets from time to time! Once was when he shot the last guy. It was cool.)
He doesn’t have the million-round clip that is the direct descendant of the old twelve-shot revolver? OK, I’m impressed.
They’re actually getting better at that in the movies, it seems to me. Statham, for example, shoots a bunch of guys and then drops his gun and takes a different (but similar) gun off of one of the guys he just shot and then checks for (and finds, and takes) a clip (or magazine, whatever) off of one of the dudes he just shot.
They’re finally filling the bullet plot hole.
He has to run out of ammo before taking on the last bad guy. That way he and the bad guy can go mano y mano and Statham can do some Statham-iferic martial arts move like a roundhouse kick in slo-mo and the bad guy gets knocked back so hard he impales kidney-first on one of the smuggled black market rhino horns or something like that.