I have never watched a movie that featured Jason Statham as the lead character, but I have noticed a common theme from the trailers. They all seem to be long on action and short on story featuring fisticuffs, gunplay, and car chases galore. To me Statham has always seemed like a cheap man’s Jean Claude Van Damme (Double Impact), which more or less sums up why I have stayed away from his films. Safe is a flick that’s been sitting on my Netflix queue for a bit, slowly inching its way up to the top of the list. So when the film finally arrived in that signature red envelope, I decided to finally give Statham a chance.
Safe chronicles the story of a young mathematics savant from China (Mei played by Catherine Chan) and a disgraced former cop from New York who cross paths when the young girl finds herself at the center of a massive push and pull between the Chinese mafia, a Russian crime lord, and corrupt New York cops. When she is entrusted with a valuable code, Statham’s Luke Wright takes it upon himself to make sure Mei makes it to safety.
The movie plays better than I expected, but it is very short on depth and character development. It wants to be an adrenaline rush of a movie in much the same way that Premium Rush is, only it is not as cleverly executed and the acting is clearly a couple of steps down. The action sequences are the strong point of the film as they are brisk and lively, but unfortunately the plot’s sensibilities are critically flawed. Needless to say there are more holes in this film than a block of Swiss cheese.
Statham is decent in the role of Luke Wright. As an actor he is a one trick pony so it behooves him to play these characters that have a singular focus for destruction. Unfortunately for him, his credibility takes a hit every time he utters a spoken line. Catherine Chan as Mei is adequate – doing just enough to sell the part. As child actors go, she doesn’t do anything to distinguish herself, but certainly did nothing horribly wrong.
As for the rest of the cast, there are a bunch of vaguely familiar role players like James Hong (Balls of Fury), Reggie Lee (The Dark Knight Rises), and Robert John Burke who do their typical yeoman’s work without leaving a particular stamp on the film, as well as a bunch of not-ready-for-prime-time actors mucking up director Boaz Yakin’s fast food production. But then this is a C-level production masquerading as a B-level flick so mediocre acting is to be expected.
How you’re going to react to this movie depends on what you are looking for going into it. If pure action is your cup of tea, then you will find this to be a moderately entertaining movie. If you’re looking for Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman in the next great American classic based off of a canonical piece of literature, then this one will lose you in the first five minutes. I suspect that for those in between the two extremes, this is a cable TV movie all the way. There’s always room for another gun toting, fist flying, car driving action flick. You just don’t necessarily need to go out of your way to see them all. Wait on this for a rainy day for maximum value.
Standout Performance: James Hong. Not so much for this movie, but more for his body of work. The man has been in everything from Big Trouble in Little China, to Wayne’s World 2, to the yet to be released R.I.P.D.
0 comments:
Post a Comment