Tag Archives: Jason Statham

A Working Man – Movie Review

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TL;DR – This is a film that did not know if it wanted to be a silly Jason Statham film or a serious Jason Statham film, and that failure to get the tone right doomed a genially strong start.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film.

A bunch of men in hardhats but their hands in the middle.

A Working Man Review –

I don’t think it is quite a reach to say that there are some actors out there, whether through typecasting or passion or skill, who end up playing the same or very similar characters in every movie they are in. One very notable example of that is Jason Statham, who historically had a character that worked in both comedic and more serious roles. But then The Beekeeper happened, and we got to see a different side to his persona. Well, when I found out he was teaming up again with the director of The Beekeeper, I was excited to see what we got … I should have tempered my expectations.   

So, to set the scene, Levon Cade (Jason Statham) is a former Royal Marine who now works as a foreman on a construction site in Chicago to be closer to his daughter Merry (Isla Gie). Levon had a difficult transition to civilian life and was helped by the Garcia family. Joe Garcia (Michael Peña) runs the construction company, but his daughter Jenny (Arianna Rivas) helps with the books. One night, Jenny goes out with her college friends to celebrate the end of a semester, not knowing that she is being hunted. When she doesn’t return home, her family is distraught and turns to Levon, the one person who they know can help.

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The Beekeeper – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It is a solid action film and one of Jason Statham’s best roles in a while.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to see this film.

Warning – contains scenes that may cause distress.

Adam Clay sits in a felid with his bee hives.

The Beekeeper Review –

Do you have a world that exists just outside of the one we live in, moving through the cracks of society? Well, can I just say that you have written something that I am very excited about? Today, we look at a film that explores what happens when you upset the wrong person, someone you never should have gone within 100 miles of.

So to set the scene, Adam Clay (Jason Statham) is a quiet person who keeps to himself, tending his beehives with space that he rents off Eloise Parker (Phylicia Rashad), a retired school teacher who owns an old farmstead all by herself. One day, Eloise was doing her bills when spyware was detected on her computer, but the people she called didn’t help. In fact, they were scammers that took everything from her. Clay arrives for dinner to find her body, just as her daughter, FBI Agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman), gets to the farm to find out what happened to her mother’s bank accounts. Clay is at a loss as to who would hurt someone as caring as Eloise, but unlike many, he has resources, a lot of resources. The kind that can find things the FBI cannot and does not care if someone goes on a rampage.

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Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre – Movie Review

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TL;DR – It never reaches the heights it is aiming for, but it is deeply entertaining in parts.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this film.

A car chase.

Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre Review –

I love spy films. I like it when they play them seriously and when they are more whimsical. When it comes to Guy Ritchie, you could get either or both. Add a cast you know can deliver and even a comeback or two, and you have a premise I want to see.

So to set the scene, it is a lovely Sunday morning when Nathan (Cary Elwes) is summoned to the intelligence headquarters in London by Knighton (Eddie Marsan). For you see, something just got robbed from a facility in Odessa. What no one knows, but the wrong people are interested in it, so that makes it a top target. Knowing traditional intelligence apparatuses would be too slow, they bring in the team that you need for cases like this, led by Orson Fortune (Jason Statham), who is now rudely having his Moroccan holiday interrupted, and worse, they will need the famous movie star Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett) to pull it off.

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Meg 2: The Trench – Movie Review

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TL;DR –Well, Meg 2 is an absolutely abysmal film that flounders at almost every stage while it fails at every front of knowing what sort of film it wants to be.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene.

Disclosure – I paid to see this film.

They walk through the Trench.

Meg 2 Review –

Well, blast, look, honestly, I didn’t see this coming. I was someone who quite liked the first Meg because it scratched that perfect dumb but fun itch that you can get with over-the-top action films. It wasn’t a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination, but it was still entertaining. So, surely a second attempt at this world will at least be amusing… well, unfortunately not.

So to set the scene, it has been some time since the first film, and Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) has been working for the Oceanic Institute based out of Hainan, China, for Jiuming Zhang (Wu Jing). But on his days off, he clandestinely monitors any shady people who could be harming the environment, such as the cargo shin The Kitty Blue that is illegally dumping radioactive material into the Philippine Sea. But things go amiss when the Meg Haiqi breaks out of their enclosure, and they find that they are not the only humans at the bottom of The Trench.

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Fast X – Movie Review

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TL;DR – A high-octane blast from start to finish, with a bombastic style that only this series can pull off.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

Disclosure – I was invited to a press screening of this film

Warning – There are many flashing lights in this film

Dom drifts his car.

Fast X Review –

If you had asked me which new film from 2001 would spawn so many sequels that you could legitimately call it a Saga, it would not have been The Fast and the Furious. I mean, it was not a bad film. Indeed it was an interesting spin on a standard narrative setup. But I struggled to connect with the series until I watched Fast Five. It was then that I got it. I bring this up because we might be at the 10th film, but we are diving back into the past.

So to set the scene, we open ten years in the past as Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) rip a vault out of a police station and onto the streets of Rio de Janeiro. It was a great success, but in the process, they kill Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida) and knock his son Dante Reyes (Jason Momoa) into the bay. Ten years later, Dom is teaching his son Brian Marcos (Leo Abelo Perry) how to drive, and all is well with the family when a knock on the door reveals a wounded Cipher (Charlize Theron). She warns him that someone is out to get him and his family, which is a problem because Roman (Tyrese Gibson), Tej (Chris “Ludacris” Bridges), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), and Han (Sung Kang) are in Rome, and no one can contact them.

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Movie Review – Hobbs & Shaw (Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, Fast and Furious: Hobbs and Shaw)

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TL;DR – A film that soars when it is in the banter/action grove but falters when it needs to move the story forward.     

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There are multiple mid-credit scenes as well as an end credit scene

Hobbs & Shaw. Image Credit: Universal Pictures.

Review –


 To be honest, if I have a blind spot in modern cinema it is the Fast and Furious franchise. When the films started to come out, I didn’t really jell with the super-serious machismo in what was an inherently silly premise. This looked to be the way for all the films but when The Fate of the Furious came out two years ago, I thought I would give it another watch. Well about the time they used a car to take out a submarine I realised that they had finally realised just how silly it all was and had leaned into it, and that is something I can get behind. That being said, a spin-off the film is still a bit of a gamble, but given how well the director and cinematographer are at actions filmmaking, I walked in being quietly optimistic and with the action, I was not let down.

So to set the scene, two years since the last adventure and Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) is enjoying his life as a DSS agent and a father to his daughter Sam (Eliana Su’a). However, at that moment in London, an MI6 team is taking out a band of mercenaries that have a manufactured virus and who are about to sell it on the black market. After a clinical takedown of the gang, all is right but then a mysterious figure (Idris Elba) arrives and single handily kills all of the MI6 bar Hattie (Vanessa Kirby) the lead agent. Fearing the virus would get into the hands of evil people Hattie injects herself with the virus to hold on to it while she escapes. The MI6 think she has turned rogue and the CIA, MI6, and the criminal organisation are now hunting her. The only chance she has is if Luke teams up with Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) and well that has disaster written all over it.

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Movie Review – The Meg (2018)

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TL;DR –  A film that knows how to be a bit silly while still playing it mostly straight about a shark that suddenly not extinct.   

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

The Meg. Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures.

Review –

Last year there was a film that came out about a killer shark destroying the world, and not just a shark but a megalodon. I wanted to go see it, but the timing never worked out and I think I was going through Jurassic World fatigue at the same time. Well, this week with the release of Godzilla and after playing Sea of Thieves I had been interested to give it a look and what would you know the very day I was pondering The Meg popped up on Netflix. Well never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I knew now was the best time to check it out and wow, it did not disappoint.

So to set the scene, off the shore of China a billionaire Morris (Rainn Wilson) has built Mana One a purpose built deep ocean observatory. Its goal is to study the life in the oceans around the Mariana Trench but to also investigate a theory of chief scientist Zhang (Winston Chao). He believes that the trench is actually deeper and there is a layer of cold water creating a thermocline (barrier) protecting an undisturbed ecosystem underneath. So they send down Lori (Jessica McNamee), Toshi (Masi Oka), and The Wall (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) in a submarine and lo and behold Zhang was right. However, just as they start to explore this new region they are attacked by something large and fast, sending them crashing into the ocean floor. With time being on the line and few people qualified they call in Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) a rescue diver who is now out of the game after a rescue went wrong and people blamed him for the deaths of his team.

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Movie Review – The Fate of the Furious (Fast and Furious 8)

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TL;DR – The Fate of the Furious is a stupid dumb film, but it’s also a bunch of fun and downright heart-warming in places.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Fate of the Furious (Fast and Furious 8). Image Credit: Universal.

Review –
Ok so we need to acknowledge straight from the start that this is the eighth film in the Fast in the Furious franchise, that’s a real accomplishment and puts it tied with Star Wars which is not mean feat, but it still has a bit to go to catch up with Star Trek, Marvel, Bond, and wait what Air Bud, really, there have been fourteen of them, goodness. Ok wait, we went off on a tangent there, ok where were we, oh yes eight films, it is a real achievement, and means that they are doing something right. However, to be honest for me I have not watched any since the 2nd back in the day, because they kept taking this ridiculous premise and playing it completely seriously and it just grated on me. But given that this is film number eight and given that this franchise has become one of the biggest in modern filmmaking I thought I’d give it another go, and wow was I pleasantly surprised. So going into the eighth film in a franchise there are some things that you can expect before the opening titles roll, there will be a lot of fast cars, a lot of women in tight clothing, a metric ass-ton of machismo, and oh, also a completely on point James Bond narrative, ok I was actually not expecting that last one but there it is and it was a pleasant surprise. It is really fascinating to jump back in after all this time and see just how much the series has evolved, but also how in many ways it has really not changed much at all. So in today’s review, we are going to look at the story, the characters, the action, as well as a couple of other tidbits.

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Movie Review – Spy

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TL;DR – It is a film that does not know if it wants to be a PG family action film, or an R raunchy exercise, and ends up being neither

Score – 2 out 5 Stars

Spy. Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Review –

In the end, my feeling on this film are quite mixed, some aspects of it really worked and others just really didn’t. I would describe this movie as a collage, where the writer/director Paul Feig has taken ideas from a number of movies and melded it all together into this film, and not always successfully. To explain what I mean, I going to break down the different components of the film, and yes this is about to get spoilery (You have been warned).

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