STARRING Jason Statham, Michael Pena, David Harbour, Jason Fleming, Arianna Rivas, Emmett J. Scanlan, Eve Mauro, Noemi Gonzalez. Written by Sylvester Stallone and David Ayer, based on the book Levon's Trade by Chuck Dixon. Produced by Sylvester Stallone. Directed by David Ayer. Running time 116 minutes.
Stath is Levon Cade, an ex-Royal Marine commando now working as a site foreman for building construction family lead by Joe Garcia (Michael Pena) and Noemi Gonzalez (Carla Garcia) whose daughter, Jenny Garcia (Arianna Rivas) gets Taken and sold to Russian mob guys, leading to Levon to use his particular and unique skill-set to go off on a one-man-army rampage to bring her back while killing every single bad guy who gets in his way. Using a variety of guns, knives, grenades, boots and fists, while only suffering a slight twinge in his left bicep after carrying one gun too many.
Featuring some, but not enough, amusing kills, particularly Jason Flemyng's demise, which comes all too soon, this is a Ronsil action movie delivering nothing new, or that exciting, just the Stath racking up the biggest kill score for one film since Arnie's vastly superior Commando. It's a by-the-numbers, A-Z romp which the Stath can do in his sleep, in fact I'm not entirely sure he wasn't sleep-walking through this.
I have a theory that Hollywood replace old actors with new versions, Brad Pitt for Robert Redford, Stallone, himself, for Victor Mature, and to a far lesser extent we see an attempt for them to try and replace successful directors of old – Christopher Nolan vying to be the new Stanley Kubrick (and failing) and J.J. Abrams struggling to be the next Steven Spielberg and now we have our first fully successful attempt as David Ayer becomes the new Michael Winner and boy does he nail it! He'll be writing restaurant reviews and coming up with catchphrases for insurance adverts before we know it. This film could have been made just was well by Canon Movies back in the 80s starring Charles Bronson. And boy, can you tell it's a Stallone scripted film, the action, the characters the cliches they all scream Stallone, it has all the subtly of a sledgehammer to the balls. Indeed, if this had been made 20 years earlier, he'd have starred in it too.
Despite this being very generic, the Stath continues to be very entertaining and every year he pumps out another action blockbuster, last year it was Ayer's The Beekeeper. Apparently next year Ayers is going to combine both into a film he's calling The Working Beekeeper Man, which will see not one but two Statham's wiping out not one but two families of gangsters, one American and one Russian. I'm already looking forward to it.
This is intriguing for some of the British actors who turn up in it and also the fact a lot of this looks like it was filmed in the UK. There's nothing new here, but it's fun and silly and the Stah is the only action hero who is funnier the more seriously he takes it.
6/10