|
Blitz
| Released |
20 May 2011 |
| Director |
Elliott Lester |
| Starring |
Jason Statham, Paddy Considine, Aiden Gillen, David Morrissey, Mark Rylance |
| Writer(s) |
Nathan Parker |
| Producer(s) |
Steve Chasman, Zygi Kamasa, Donald Kushner, Brad Wyman |
| Origin |
United Kingdom |
| Running Time |
97 minutes |
| Genre |
Thriller |
| Rating |
18 |
|
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Gloriously awful.
When Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels became a big hit in 1998, you wouldn’t have banked on Jason Statham becoming the breakout star of the main cast. While other careers have largely foundered, Statham carved out a nice little niche for himself as Britain’s only real action star. High-paced, low-brow action movies like The Transporter, Crank and The Bank Job have done well. He was even formally recognised as an action hero when he was cast alongside action legends like Jet Li, Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren in The Expendables.
In that film, even alongside such stony-faced colleagues as Stallone and Lundgren, Statham’s limited acting ability was shown up. For Statham is truly a maestro of bad acting, the Laurence Olivier of his wonky craft. You can almost imagine him staying up half the night working out the worst, most wooden way to deliver a line, such is his dedication. It hasn’t really hurt his career though as most of his roles require more physical attributes.
You sense that in taking the role of Sergeant Brant in Blitz, he might have wanted to stretch his range but it’s resulted in one of the most unintentionally hilarious performances ever committed to screen. Based on Irish author Ken Bruen’s series of crime novels, Statham plays Brant, a tough police detective of Irish descent. He proves his Irishness, by being an alcoholic (naturally) and also by beating up some hoodies trying to steal his car with a hurley. Yes, that’s right a hurley stick, the mere sight of which provoked roars of laughter at the press screening.
Brant gets in trouble for this attack when a nosey journalist (David Morrissey) gets involved with the case. However he has bigger problems when a psychopath (Aidan Gillen) starts killing police officers. With his current boss (Mark Rylance) off on a bender because of the death of his wife, Inspector Porter Nash (Paddy Considine) is brought in to lead the hunt for the killer. Nash is a controversial choice because he’s homosexual but Brant decides to team up with him anyway because he’s, "a good copper, despite being a shirt-lifter".
This is just one of Brant’s non politically-correct opinions that he sprinkles with glee throughout the film as if he’s channelling John Thaw from The Sweeney. Brant ticks the box of every sort of stereotype of the 'cop who plays by his own rules'. He drinks constantly, uses over-the-top brutality on a routine basis and hardly does any actual work. In fact, he’s really a hopeless detective, so obsessed with being tough that he overlooks basic stuff that’s staring him in the face. When an informant tips him off about the identity of the killer, he beats him up rather than really listen to him. In fact the scruffy informant goes off and finds the killer himself, proving himself by far the better detective. Even when Brant finally finds the killer and discovers he has a clear motive, does he think about questioning him? No, he just decides that they’ll “keep an eye on him” which means he’s free to kill again.
The trouble for this type of daft movie is that the audience is far too familiar with real crime scene procedures to be convinced by this nonsense. At one stage the killer is left go free and walks out of the station carrying a piece of evidence that would link him to at least one murder. Yet, the dense coppers just stand there helpless, because he’s been “too clever” for them. At another point an armed response team is sent in to capture the suspect and of course they wait outside in their cars for Brant to arrive, at which point the killer jumps out the window and it’s a great excuse for Statham to have a chase scene.
This is undoubtedly daft stuff, but for all that, there is some entertainment value to be had from its sheer awfulness, especially the performances. Gillen wildly over-acts as the villain and Considine and Morrissey look slightly embarrassed to be there. But Statham’s performance is so awful it leaves the rest in the shade. Yet, it’s so bad it’s actually really funny and at times you feel he’s winking at the audience with another one of his terrible one-liners.
Overall the film is a disaster but taken as a piece of nonsense, it is quite entertaining if you’re in the right mood.
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Jim O’Connor |
