It’s any other day of the week and you know what that means, Jason Statham has a new film out! It’s been hours since his last one and, I’ve been sitting on the edge of my seat waiting. I had to watch Eastenders with the Kill Bill soundtrack playing over it to get some sort of Statham-esque vibe going. Don’t misinterpret my lazy use of irony here as a dislike for him though, I genuinely think Statham is one of the most satisfying of today’s action stars to watch, always really well performed and choreographed punches and kicks and the like. The film in question this week is Homefront.
In Homefront Statham plays an ex-cop called Phil Broker who is hiding in the depths of Louisiana with his daughter Maddy. Maddy is getting picked on in school, and it is revealed, placed into the Ludivico from A Clockwork Orange by the bad guy from inspector gadget and made to watch Hannah, Chocolate and Kick Ass until she could fight. Okay, most of that sentence is a lie, but she does hand the kid his cumbersome ass within a few seconds as if it were true. This draws the self-righteous attention of her bully’s parents who are the kind of people satirised in My Name Is Earl. The bully’s father, encouraged by his wife, attempts to kick Statham’s ass and having never seen any of his other films ends up quite surprised when his face and dignity are wiped all over the car park.
James Franco is introduced as a good old-fashioned drug manufacturer prone to threatening kids when they’re off their minds on crystal meth. Mean, considering they are probably trying to unearth hallucinated bugs out from under their skin and dodge James Franco’s baseball bat at the same time. Franco is commissioned to ruin Statham’s life a bit and also happens to find out that he’s responsible for the death one of his guys. In retribution he decides to kidnap Maddy leading to Phil Broker going down the usual Statham route; hurting people until he gets his daughter/son/wife/revenge.
I enjoyed it, quite a bit, but I had about half my body weight of red wine in me. As always the fight scenes were satisfying and everyone involved was great but considering it was set in Louisiana you really expect it to have a lot more of a swampy vibe going on, like maybe Dr. John serving up some tunes and gumbo. Instead I ended up watching a beautiful vibrant background be used as white space behind two-dimensional characters in a nothing more than typical action film. It feels like a Stallone/Statham collaboration like this should’ve blown my mind to smithereens but instead left me with wine soaked ennui.
Homefront gets a 3/5.
[★★★☆☆]
Dave Roberts
Homefront at CeX
