Kickin’ it old school
Yes, it’s strictly gut-level stuff, but Stat-fans will lap it up all the same.
OKAY, so the last couple of nonExpendables outings for Jason Statham weren’t exactly what fans have come to expect – nay, demand – of them.
Parker went on way too long with more than one unnecessary plot detour, and could have benefitted from a complete removal of J.Lo’s character from the story.
As for Hummingbird, it was ... let’s just be generous and say it was an interesting experiment but the end result kind of just sat there in the petri dish, going nowhere.
The whole point of watching a Jason Statham movie is to see him kick ass and move on to the next boot-worthy buttock without stopping to take names. It doesn’t matter if he does it as a cop or convict, mercenary or missionary, vigilante or vagabond.
There should just be plenty of gratuitous head-busting with a minimum of plot, a pittance of pathos and please ... no soul-searching or introspection. (Yes, I need help, no argument there.)
Devotees of The Stat, then, should be pleased to know that Homefront is a return to form for the action star and also a throwback to the old hero-on-the-homestead movies we’ve come to know and love since the days of, what, Shane? Or maybe Van Damme’s Nowhere To Run?
Based on a novel by thriller writer Chuck Logan and written for the screen by Sylvester Stallone, no less, it begins violently enough with undercover cop Phil Broker (Statham) setting up a gang of drug-dealing bikers. Before you can say Ghosts Of Mars, several people have died including the son of the boss biker, shot no fewer than 47 times by the cops.
Fast-forward two years and now-widower, Phil has moved to a small town in Louisiana with his 10-year-old daughter Mattie (Izabela Vidovic). Trouble starts when the kid beats the tar out of a schoolyard bully, who happens to be the son of a drugged-out and foulmouthed housewife played by Kate Bosworth (dang, woman, you kiss Superman’s kid goodnight with that mouth?).
Which ordinarily wouldn’t be so bad – sticks and stones and all that – except that the “lady” then gets her psychotic brother Gator (James Franco) to terrorise Phil and his kid.
Which also wouldn’t be so bad, because Phil can dismantle five times his weight in Gators before his morning coffee. It’s just that Gator happens to be the local drug lord who happens to have a girlfriend named Sheryl (Winona Ryder) who, it just happens – wow, so much happenstance – used to run with ... yep, the same biker gang that Phil set up.
And the same gang whose now-jailed boss sends after the ex-lawman with orders to inflict a very painful death upon him.
Which, if you can’t guess by now, leads to Phil playing out a deadly version of Homestead Alone on the very wet (with blood) bandits and then proceeding to teach his would-be nemesis Gator a thing or two about pissing off natural born killers who just want to be left alone to go horse-riding with their kids.
It’s all very formulaic, not terribly imaginative, the generic henchmen have a habit of disappearing and popping up only to get beaten down – then vanish again.
The film also shows criminal negligence in its under-use of Clancy Brown. Though the last time we saw The Kurgan as a small-town sheriff (in the pilot episode for Sleepy Hollow) he lost his head within five minutes of showing up; so maybe it’s not such a bad trade-off for him to just do nothing here.
But if all you’re after is some good oldfashioned cathartic cinematic violence, you’ve come to the right place. The action man gets to break a lot of heads and faces, beat the crap out of three goons with both hands tied behind his back, and yes, once again he pronounces someone man and knife.
And those who thrive on such visceral thrills would happily eat this up, for what The Stat hath joined together, let no screen violence watchdog group or “experimental” filmmaker put asunder.