Regular readers should get a life may recall that quite often in the past I have been somewhat scathing about the multiplex chain that maintains two outposts in Oxford city centre. I suppose one can’t really blame them for promoting 3D as they do, everyone’s doing that, and no doubt the decision to convert a perfectly lovely cinema foyer into yet another branch of a caffeine-pushing multinational was driven by sound financial concerns – and yet I can’t help scowling every time I walk past a gang of people who couldn’t tell Timur Bekmambetov from Andrei Tarkovsky, and am then asked if I know my chosen showing is only happening in two dimensions. Grr. One source of my animus, however, has been removed, as the chain’s apparent prejudice against a certain kind of action movie has abated and they are showing a Jason Statham film for the first time since The Expendables in 2010.
Well, this is all very well and good but I feel the cure still has some way to go – for while Safe is indeed showing, it is doing so in the smallest and least whizzy screen, and – for reasons I honestly can’t figure out – the cinema is not advertising all of the screenings. Some showings of Safe do not appear on the poster outside the theatre, but are instead only apparent if you burrow into the depths of the corporate website.
Oh well. If nothing else, this meant that when I turned up I had the place to myself, which – while obviously bad for Safe‘s takings – ensured I wouldn’t have to shout at people for talking, eating crisps, or singing along to their smartphone during the movie. It also gave me a chance to consider again that age-old question – if a screening is scheduled, and no-one turns up to it, do they go ahead and run the movie to an empty theatre? I suspect they may be contractually obliged to. My experience watching Space Truckers in Huddersfield in 1997 suggests theatre staff may use (apparently) empty screenings as an opportunity to do a bit of sneaky extra hoovering – but I digress, and digressing away from a new Jason Statham movie is not to be tolerated in these parts.
Anyway, frequenters of this blog may not be inordinately surprised to learn that in Boaz Yakin’s movie Jason Statham plays the Jason Statham Character, as usual – a tough, highly skilled loner forced into a situation where he must abandon his usual strict code of conduct. What is a bit of a surprise is that, at the start of the film, the Jason Statham Character is a homeless guy living on the streets of New York. The reasons for this are ultimately complex (keep reading), but basically he has ticked off the Russian Mafia and the NYPD and been forced to live a squalid, hermit-like existence in the knowledge that anyone he becomes attached to will be slaughtered by the mob.
Also having first-hand problems with organised crime is Mei (Catherine Chan), an eleven-year-old maths prodigy co-opted by the Chinese Triads (or possibly the Tongs) in order to, er, help their New York branch do their accounts. With a big deal in the offing, Mei is required to memorise a Long And Significant Number (= obvious McGuffin) by her masters – but then the Russian Mafia bust up proceedings and she is also forced onto the streets and onto the run! With the Russians, the Triads, and corrupt cops all on her case, who can possibly save her?
Well, if you can’t guess the answer, then boy, have you got to watch more movies. Previously on the verge of committing a regrettable act, the Jason Statham Character pulls himself together, soundly batters the thugs chasing Mei and together the pair go on the run. But what does the Long And Significant Number actually mean? Could it have anything to do with the Jason Statham Character’s own shadowy past?
You always know pretty much what you’re going to get from a Jason Statham movie, because – as the great man himself freely admits – he knows what his strengths as a performer are and plays to them pretty relentlessly. After a fairly slow start in which the two main characters are established (rather well), he is in familiar tooth-rattling, head-banging, nut-crunching mode for most of Safe, and does this with his customary aplomb.
That said, it’s starting to seem to me that where a Statham movie is made and/or set can tell you a lot about it: his French movies for Luc Besson are gorgeous-looking pieces of stylish, stylised nonsense, his London-based films like Blitz and Killer Elite are a bit darker and grittier, anything American set on the east coast is a touch mechanical and undistinguished, and the Crank movies set in LA are palpably insane and appalling. (Don’t Write In Dept.: these are just generalisations, I am aware exceptions exist.) Safe fits the pattern reasonably well – it’s a solidly put-together action thriller, but lacks the moments of weirdness and craziness that mark out the best Statham films.
For a while it looks as though Safe is just going to be a engagingly Besson-esque bonkers chase movie, complete with ridiculously stereotyped Asian and Russian gangsters and a punch-up every three minutes. I would’ve gone for that; that would’ve been right up my street. The relationship between Statham and Chan is interesting without being schmaltzy, and it would’ve given the big guy a chance to show a different side of himself. (Given some of the very uncharacteristic emotions Statham displays very convincingly early on, this could’ve been really interesting.)
Suffice to say this does not pan out. Yakin’s direction is inventively different and one of the movie’s strengths, but the plot gets a bit overcomplicated (for this kind of movie) rather quickly, and key bits of exposition are rattled through at top speed. And rather than simply being an ex-fighter turned drifter, at different times it’s suggested that the Jason Statham Character has variously been a cage-fighter, a cop, an operative for a shadowy government agency, and a dustman.
(This last at least gives our man the opportunity to be a part of the following exchange of dialogue when he corners a bad guy in a crowded spot:
Bad Guy: ‘You??!? The garbage collector?!?!?’
Jason Statham Character: ‘I never collected garbage. I disposed of it.’ BLAM. To aghast bystanders: ‘Don’t lose any sleep. He wasn’t a very nice person.’)
Ah, that’s part of why he’s probably my favourite movie star. But even so, this is all a bit too much backstory and too much plot for a 94 minute movie. It doesn’t quite come completely unravelled by the end, but genre conventions definitely get a bit of a pasting – the ultimate villain the Jason Statham Character must confront doesn’t even appear until halfway through, and even then he’s one of the least likely people imaginable. And as for the climax – well, I can understand the subverting of audience expectations. Done cleverly and appropriately it can really make a movie something special. But just as it would be a silly idea to subvert expectations in a comedy film by leaving out all of the jokes, so it’s surely a questionable move by the makers of Safe to go to the trouble of setting up a climax revolving around… and then messing with expectations by… (Insert your own spoilers, should you wish.)
So I still think we’re waiting for the absolute undeniable classic of action cinema which Jason Statham surely has in him, but that’s not to say Safe is a waste of time by any means. It’s nicely played and the action is well-choreographed, and it basically ticks all the boxes to give you what you really want from this kind of film. It even gives you a little bit more – but just not quite enough to be anything really special.
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