REJOICE ALL, FOR THERE IS NEW STATHAM: SAFE

Statham can't even be on a movie poster without reminding you you're basically fucking dead.

Chris Sarandon: “You got some balls.”
Jason Statham: “I know,  it's amazing I can even walk.”

--the most self-aware line in Statham's entire oeuvre, in Safe

The advent of new Statham is always a good thing, and a sign that the universe is still capable, despite its massive fucking foibles, of good. Statham pictures are refreshingly devoid of subtext, and empirical in their simplicity of purpose: there are bad guys, those bad guys need to get owned, and Statham needs to frown a bit, growl, and maybe take his shirt off. Also, under normal circumstances, he gets laid. Safe, his latest, obviates any getting laid by having Russian gangsters kill his wife in his first scene, and giving him a 12-year-old female co-star. Fortunately, the most crucial elements of his skill set, the ones relating to the ability to deal violent and stylish death to many, many men, are left intact. Which is why Safe is fucking great.

Though, to be perfectly clear, as a movie qua movie, Safe is a gigantic pile of shit. The little girl's backstory is repetitive and takes forever, Statham's “character” is motivated by asequentual causality (Ed. Note: it's okay, you're not crazy, “asequential” isn't a real word, that's the point) and the twists, of which there are a couple medium-rare humdingers, don't have any resonance because they're not built on anything. It's really kind of bizarre that Boaz Yakin wrote this movie, because he started as a writer, and a pretty good (if nowhere near great) one once upon a time. Safe is not a well-written movie. The structure is like someone hacked Boaz Yakin's copy of Final Draft and reprogrammed it to be some kind of stochastic action movie plot point generator. All the stuff happens that's supposed to happen in a stupid action movie—and, at a certain point, the movie almost reluctantly embraces its own stupidity, which helps—but a lot of the stuff not directly concerned with Jason Statham murdering extras is stunningly bad.

One thing that carries Safe through a lot of those slow points is the cast. Safe is an object lesson in the perfect way to cast a stupid action movie:

—Obviously you need a star who brings the ownage (in this case, Statham, who meets this requirement with the ease of breathing).

—James Hong always helps, because James Hong is the fucking greatest.

—Then, although this might sound counter-intuitive, you want a non-Russian to play the Russian mobster. Sándor Técsy (who sadly died after the movie was completed), a Hungarian, meets this qualification; Russian heavies need fake Russian accents, and if there's one thing the entire world can agree on, it's that doing a fake Russian accent is massive fun. Look at John Malkovich in Rounders. Hell, look at the Russian dudes I used to lift weights with back in the day, they even liked doing fake Russian accents, and they were Russian.

—Another very important element is the random dude who used to be good on a TV show, which role is filled with élan by Prison Break alum Reggie Lee (for reference, see also Jon Hamm in like ninety supporting roles recently in things like The Town, Sucker Punch, and A-Team, where you're like “what the fuck is Jon Hamm doing here?” and he's always great, no matter how dumb the movie is) who takes the massive risk of attempting to bring nuance to his role as James Hong's man on the ground in New York, fulfilling the “ruthless fuckface” aspect of the role that should be all there is to it, except he throws the curveball of actually caring about the little girl in his evil motherfucker kind of way. Sure you have to grade him on a bit of a curve because the script is dumb and subtlety always seems more subtle when Jason Statham is running around emptying clips into people at point blank range, but still, Reggie Lee should be in more movies.

—Similar, but not quite the same, you need a “That Guy” who's good enough that you remember his name in the future. What's good, Robert John Burke?

—Very important, the kid has to not be annoying. Christina Chan pulls this off pretty well, although admittedly, the bar is low. Still, she's convincing as a smart kid, which, ya know, doesn't grow on trees.

—You need some random dude who when he shows up, you're like, “Whoa, wasn't this fuckin guy just in high school movies, like, last week?” This is known in certain circles as the Judd Nelson in New Jack City part. Anson Mount, as the Mayor's aide-de-camp, fits the bill with an entertainingly reptilian flair once he shows up two-thirds of the way through the picture (we could have used him earlier, for reasons that become clear towards climax time).

—And, essential to this entire enterprise (recall, if you will, the invaluable contribution of Powers Boothe to Rapid Fire) is the distinguished veteran of stage and screen who pretends like he's slumming it, whom all involved including the audience have to humor on this point, but who secretly knows he isn't really slumming it and so, in a manner of speaking, puts his hip into the performance. Chris Sarandon earns immediate induction into the Evil White Guy In A Suit Hall Of Fame here (he would have been a snap for The Princess Bride except for the technicality of him not actually wearing a suit in that due to it being fantasy), as DA MAYOR O' NOO YAWK FUCKIN CITY, complete with goatee, shameless 9/11 exploitation, and a complete absence of ethics or morals. He also does a perfect New York accent. Absolutely perfect. He makes the genius choice of not overdoing it, which is where everybody else on the planet who isn't from New York fucks up.

The story is about who gives a fuck, here's the hero, here's the kid, here are a whole lot of bad guys, and we're going to keep changing the rules every ten minutes until Statham just says fuck it and kills everyone. The whole point to a movie like this is that Statham kills everyone, and this is where Boaz Yakin, fight coordinator Chad Stahelski, and editor Frederic Thoraval (who cut Pierre Morel's classics District B13, Taken, and From Paris With Love) really shine. The action sequences are thumbs-up, a-ok, righty-o Sunny Jim. Statham kills a lot of people in this, very definitively (at one point, emptying the whole rest of his clip into a guy who was pretty much fucked anyway just because, at a certain point, you have to let motherfuckers know who's Statham and who's dead), and the filmmakers don't hang him out to dry in the slightest. The shittiness of the non-action parts are counterbalanced damn near perfectly by how dope the action parts all are. Let's, once more, have a round of applause for Chad Stahelski and Frederic Thoraval, as fight coordinators and editors don't get nearly enough love, and these two dudes are really fucking good at their jobs.

It's not a slight, even if it is a touch tautological, to say that Safe is for the kind of person who wants to see Safe. If you're already the kind of person who goes “fuck yeah, new Statham!” you'll be in good hands, especially with the picture's relative brevity; the running time's listed at 95 minutes but it isn't a second over 90. Non-initiates may find wading through the bullshit to get to the ownage a bit taxing, though Safe absolutely delivers once you get through the clunky expository parts. Statham is a singular entity. It's absolutely fucking hilarious to see him play a New York cop without making the slightest apparent effort to hide his English accent, but Statham don't change his accent for a motherfucker. He is to be beheld, not nitpicked.