MyRating: YYYDirector: Simon West
Cast: Jason Statham, Ben Foster, Tony Goldwyn, Donald Sutherland, Jeff Chase, Mini Anden
MPAA: Rated R for strong brutal violence throughout, language, some sexual content and nudity
Jason Statham is Arthur Bishop, reprising a role played by Charles Bronson in 1972 in the movie with the same title, as a professional hitman with the skills of a 'mechanic', who kills his targets with careful and detail planning, to make them look like accidents. It's a job with high discipline and perfection. Driving by guilt, Bishop decides to mentor his mentor's, Harry McKenna's (Donald Sutherland) son, Steve McKenna (Ben Foster), an impulsive and short-fused young man, to become an assassin like him. As their mentor and student relationship grows, Bishop unavoidably puts himself in a position that may expose his deadly secret, as if the secret is being exposed to Steve, it may not only complicate things as well as their relationship, but also it may put them opposite one another in a table, to kill each other.
This is a brutal and bloody violence action thriller that seems to be a perfect vehicle for Jason Statham. As one of the most exciting action stars nowadays, who continuously building his profile to become a prominent one, Statham does know how to satisfy his fans. And he did look cool as a fine assassin here. When watching a Statham movie, we must know what we expect, since it may not be the story that purely attracts you, but Statham himself is an attraction now. If you want to see a fun (again, violence) action movie that shows the fine Western 'martial arts' moves, then you have to see a Statham's movie, as we used to like Jean Claude Van Damme's or Steven Seagal's in the past. But what makes Statham a bit different from Van Damme and Seagal for me is, I think this guy can act pretty well, as compared to those two old actors. Statham didn't catch much of my attention in his earlier apperances in the big screen, as he played a lot of supporting actor roles in the past, but now, he surely slowly catches my attention.
Another main cast here is Ben Foster, who appeared as the angry young rookie assassin, and a loose cannon. Foster is a good actor, but he is yet to find a role that could give him a bigger career. And a role like this is a role that we have seen so many times of him. But anyway, he seems to be quite good at it.
The story itself was a decent one. Not really outstanding, either in the script or direction, but it has its good moments. The shaky camera works when it came to actions were actually a bit disturbing for me to enjoy the action sequences in full. I guess it's simply because I am not a big fan of shaky camera things. What interested the most was, of course, Statham. Not his best movie, as I expected him to fight more with his bare fists, but in overall, it was quite okay and enjoyable. (MJ)
