daniel cohen reviews the latest statham thriller…
Plot: When a young girl (Catherine Chan) with a brilliant mind for calculations is kidnapped by a Chinese crime lord (James Hong), she is taken to New York to memorize a critical code in order to open a safe in which a rival Russian gang is also after. The girl comes across a former cop (Jason Statham) who now takes it upon himself to protect her.
What we have here is a very intriguing concept, and for the first ten minutes, I was all in on this, but it quickly descends into a lackluster plot, combined with ho-hum action. This is something that really could have worked if the script didn’t turn into a typical Jason Statham vehicle that I just didn’t care about at all.
So the beginning is about this young Chinese girl, maybe around 10-12 years old, who is this Good Will Hunting-esque math genius. She gets abducted by Han Jiao (James Hong), a big time crime lord who forces her to do his calculations and business projections so he doesn’t have to use a computer, because it always leaves a trail. This is actually an interesting story. I wish the movie was just about this girl, and her life growing up in a crime syndicate as we follow her throughout her teenage to young adult years … that’s interesting. But no, they have to transition into this lame story about Luke Wright (Jason Statham), a guy who is forced to leave his home after his wife is killed because he didn’t take a dive in a fight.
So getting by my disappoint of what this film ultimately ended up being, let’s talk about Jason Statham. I’m not the biggest fan of this guy. He reminds me a lot of Paul Bettany — no charisma, and he always looks tired. I do feel bad for him though because he’s forced to deliver some really horrendous dialogue, but he’s just not very good here. This movie could have worked if you had someone like Tom Hardy in the role, but every time the film focused on his character, I couldn’t care less.
But Statham isn’t the only bad performance. The acting all around is pretty putrid. There’s a sub-plot that centers on all these corrupt cops, and their acting is so over the top, I wanted to throw up. And I hate to pick on child actors, but the girl (Catherine Chan) is also really bad. She was okay early on, but her scenes with Statham were cringe-worthy, so maybe it was his fault. There were two performances I did like though, with one being James Hong, a veteran presence we’ve seen in such classics as Blade Runner, and comedies that include Wayne’s World 2 and Airplane!
The other guy I liked was Han’s right hand man, Chang, played by Reggie Lee. He’s Mei’s sort of care taker and surrogate father. He was intriguing in that he was clearly evil, but you also wondered if he actually legitimately cared for Mei. Chang was also part of the one action scene that actually worked, which involved a crowd of people at a fancy New York City hotel restaurant running for their lives. This just goes back to the fact that I wish I saw a different movie that centered on the relationship between Mei and Chang.
The director for this (Boaz Yakin) is also as much to blame as the actors. This movie just gets way too convoluted to the point where I stopped caring. I literally stopped paying attention in the last 35 minutes. The reason is because the movie dives head first into the Statham character and his past relationship with these corrupt cops. The only thing that kept my attention was the Mei storyline, but when they completely abandon that, I was done.
(Spoilers This Paragraph) But what really pissed me off is when the film all of a sudden places a huge emphasis on this guy with glasses who absolutely comes out of no where! He turns into the main antagonist at the end, even though he’s literally in one scene before this! What the hell!! Are you kidding me? This film has no idea what it’s doing, and it gets progressively worse as it goes along. There is no structure whatsoever.
So there’s at least some good action, right? Nope. Despite the one hotel scene I mentioned earlier, the action is so generic and boring, that I actually preferred the crappy dialogue scenes. The music is also generic, and kind of rips off the Mission: Impossible theme. It’s subtle, but it’s there. And once again, my biggest action pet peeve rears its ugly head … shaky cam filmmaking. You can’t tell what’s going on! This is becoming more prevalent in film, and it needs to stop.
The one good thing that could come out of this movie though is that maybe some screenwriter watching this paid attention to the first ten minutes and said to themselves, “Hey, this thing with the little girl is actually a really good idea. I’m gonna go write it.” Despite some promising ideas, and a couple good performances, this film is boring, horribly acted, but more importantly, I didn’t care.
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Barely Passable Entertainment)
