Take a look at a random photo gallery of stills from Jason Statham movies, and you may be hard-pressed to tell one from another. There he is riding a motorcycle, or driving a fast car, or sprinting across rooftops while firing a gun, always with that same steely gaze and singular sense of purpose.
Purists may argue that no one has stepped up to fill the gap left as the brawny bunch of ’80s action heroes — Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Norris — have aged well past the point of plausibly jumping out of moving vehicles without breaking a hip. (At least not without a wink to the audience that they know full well that they’re too old for this … stuff.)
But I’d argue that Statham is the real deal, and fully deserving of his role as the “youthful” contingent (at a sprightly 43) in the aging-actioner extravaganza The Expendables last year. He’s an imposing physical presence onscreen without being a hulk, attractive enough to be a legitimate romantic lead, with a gruff charisma that’s sufficient to carry the lightweight needs of an action flick. Most important — and this, more than anything else, is what allowed the old guard to be so fondly remembered — he’s enjoyable enough to watch that he can occasionally make one forget just how silly and dull a movie like Killer Elite really is.
The film is ostensibly based on a true story, a controversial book — the facts of which are in some dispute — by former British SAS officer Ranulph Fiennes. Statham plays Danny, a hit man who’s in the midst of his “one last job” as the movie opens, but who’s only a year into a bucolic retirement in rural Australia when news reaches him that his former partner and mentor (Robert De Niro, seeming largely disinterested in acting) has been taken prisoner.
The ransom is a job: The Omani sheik responsible wants Danny to avenge the deaths of three of his sons, each killed by a British SAS officer during the Dhofar Rebellion a few years before the film’s early-’80s setting. Find the three men, get confessions on tape, then make the deaths look like accidents; mentor goes free, Danny and his team get $6 million out of the deal.